


Just Bounce One in the Dirt

by MissMoe



Category: Baseball RPF, Hyakujitsu no Bara | Maiden Rose
Genre: Alternate Universe - Baseball, Anal Sex, Angst and Humor, Baseball, Baseball Idiots, Eventual Romance, Fluff and Smut, He bit my ass!, I suck at tagging, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Just look away, Klaus is scared, M/M, New York Mets, No shortage of wannabe heroes, Past Rape/Non-con, Suguri is kicking ass all over the place, Taki goes nympho on Klaus, karaoke madness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-12-16 23:10:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 57,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11838954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMoe/pseuds/MissMoe
Summary: Klaus von Wolfstadt is a catcher brought in to provide some tender loving care for the Mets’ newest ace from Japan, Taki Reizen. Their chemistry on the field carries over into the bedroom where Klaus hones his home run swing on his diminutive pitcher.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, the Mets just got swept by the Yankees in last night’s game four of the subway series, which made me feel a little sorry for our boys in blue and orange in Flushing. Then it got me thinking…
> 
> This baseball-Maiden Rose mash-up is pretty much non-canon AU and most of the action will take place in the future so I can mess with it however I please. Not sure how long this will be. I’m playing it by ear.

 

The 2017 season was another tear-filled laugher for the New York Mets, a season which began yet again with all the baseball analysts gushing over the starting rotation— _Unbeatable! To die for! 100+ mph fastball! Thor! Thor! Thor!_ —only to be proven sadly wrong on every count. Yeah, leave it to the Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen to break Thor’s hammer, shred the Dark Knight’s bat cape, send Zach Wheeler and Steven Matz and too many other young arms to the operating room for good ol’ Tommy John surgery, the duct tape of Major League Baseball. Only Jacob deGrom seemed to escape the Warthen curse, and probably because he had spent the better part of his pre-Mets career playing shortstop and then ignoring everything Warthen told him to do on the mound. Or maybe his beautiful flowing hair was some sort of talisman against evil. Except…

*** 

A week into the 2018 season, after more cautious predictions by the talking heads regarding the Mets’ chances for success, poor Jacob felt a strange twinge and pop in his right shoulder after his normal follow-through on a curveball. Dan Warthen, perched as always on the first step of the dugout, jogged quickly out to the mound behind a worried Terry Collins. X-rays and MRI revealed a badly torn rotator cuff. That was that. There would be surgery and then rehab and then more questions regarding the Mets’ handling of their pitching staff. How could this sort of thing happen year after year? What the hell was going on? Was there indeed a curse?

"I don't know what to tell you, Gary." Ron Darling threw his hands helplessly in the air in the SNY broadcast booth the inning after deGrom was led off the mound and into the clubhouse. A grim-looking Gary Cohen sat to Ron's left while Keith Hernandez slumped to his right shaking his head and scowling at the ceiling. "We have no answers, do we Keith?"

Keith whipped off his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You know...it's bad enough that kids today can't bunt to save their a-...behinds, but to see the one stalwart...the one reliable workhorse in the Mets' rotation go down like this...and so _early_ in the season...you gotta wonder what the f-...I mean...has anybody checked the drinking water? For crying out loud!"

Gary grimaced into the camera and said somberly, "We'll continue this discussion after a word from our tri-state Chevy dealer."

The next day, after a 13-2 clobbering at the hands of the Washington Nationals, Mets GM Sandy Alderson made a rare appearance at the post-game press conference to divulge the extent and seriousness of deGrom’s injury. With Terry Collins sitting next to him wondering why he was even still managing this team, Alderson assured the New York sports media that he had an ace up his sleeve. Literally. 

“Well, we weren’t planning on calling him up so soon, but with Jacob out for the season and with Noah on a restricted pitch count, we’ll be expediting the process,” Sandy announced.

Twenty year old right-handed pitcher Taki Reizen, acquired during a winter trade from the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, would be in New York and suited up in white, blue and orange by the end of the week to plug the massive hole in the rotation. The kid had struggled more than expected during spring training and management had thought it best to let him spend a month in Triple-A to work out the jitters. But then the kid's father had died of a heart attack in late March and he was issued bereavement leave to return to Japan for the funeral, so he didn't have the benefit of playing without pressure in Las Vegas. No matter. The Mets had paid huge sums to steal him away from Japan and they were going to get the most out of him. That was the plan at least.

Three days later, Brian McCann—the veteran catcher acquired from the Houston Astros* during the offseason to anchor the team and provide much-needed leadership in the clubhouse—broke a left femur and three ribs in a freak car accident. The season was over for him before it had barely started. 

*** 

Two thousand two hundred thirty-three miles away, the phone rang in the office of Pedro Lopez of the Las Vegas 51s, the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate in Nevada. The team had just won their fifth game in a row and was on a solid roll, especially after word had come down that deGrom and now McCann were out for the season. As crushing as that kind of news was for the Mets organization, it also sent a shiver of anticipation among the Minor League players. Every time one of the guys went down in Queens, it opened up the possibility of a call-up. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Pedro said. “Great, that’s just great, Mr. Alderson. I know he won’t let you down.” Pedro hung up and walked into the locker room where most of the guys were getting dressed after their showers to go to dinner. He quietly approached the man sitting in the far corner still taking off his pads and gear. “Hey, Wolfstadt.” 

“What?” The man didn’t turn around as he bent low in his chair to unclasp his shin guards. “I already talked to the media. And if that Kevin what’s-his-face asks me one more time how it feels to miss hitting that grand slam, I’m gonna tear his throat out. What do you _think_ it feels like, Kev?” he spat out in disgust. “Fucking douchebag.” 

Klaus was still muttering under his breath when Pedro interrupted his tirade. “Well, we still won, so no harm done. And I think you’ll be in a better mood later.” 

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?” Klaus stood to his full height and looked down a good four inches at his manager, who wasn’t exactly short at six feet. “You got some sweet pussy lined up for me on the Strip tonight?” 

Pedro smirked. “You wish, motherfucker. Your pathetic love life is your own problem. Make sure you stop by my office after you hit the shower. Christ, you stink.” 

*** 

Thirty minutes later Klaus was sitting in Pedro’s office with his jaw hanging open. He couldn’t believe it, even though he had dreamed of this moment for the last twenty of his twenty-six years of life, it still seemed completely unreal. He was going to the big leagues where players flew on private planes and didn’t have to carry their own luggage or schlep their own equipment, where the hotels didn’t smell of mold and cheap disinfectant, where everything was bigger, better, faster, sweeter, richer. 

“You know that McCann is out. They want _you_ to mentor that kid they brought over from Japan,” Pedro told him. “Didn’t you grow up there?” 

“Well, no. I mean, I lived there when I was sixteen for a year when my dad was there for work. But that was a long time ago.” Klaus scratched his chin and realized he had missed a few spots shaving. 

“Can't you speak the language? That’s one of the reasons the front office is asking for you. They’re thinking it’ll help the kid transition faster.” 

“Shit. I can say a few things. You know—hi, see ya, fuck off—that sort of thing. Aren’t they going to have an interpreter for him?” 

Pedro sat back in his chair tapping a Sharpie pen against the side of his head. Klaus didn't have the heart to tell him the cap was off. “Probably. But it wouldn’t hurt to pretend you’re fluent, even if you aren’t, if you know what I mean.” 

“Yeah, okay, great.” Klaus slapped his palms on his thighs and got up, shook hands with his manager while admiring the abstract  'art' Pedro had inadvertently drawn onto his scalp. “Guess I’ll go catch up with the rest of the guys for some grub.” 

His teammates bought him drinks and offered to hook him up with one of the classier call girls swarming the bar and it was oh so tempting to give in to all-out debauchery. But the thrill of leaving this glitzy, glaring shithole of a town by week’s end was enough excitement for the night. Plus, his body was aching from the game earlier in the day. At twenty-six, he wasn’t all that young anymore in a sport where youth was everything and playing a position in which the body took a beating from both pitcher and batter didn't improve his chances for longevity. He had always wanted to be a catcher, though, from Pee-Wee league onward. He liked calling the shots, setting up the pitches, fucking with the batter’s head. And now, he’d get to do it all…with some kid from Japan.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Brian McCann is with the Houston Astros as I write this, but, hey, this is fanfiction and I'll be taking lots of liberties with facts.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Klaus arrived at Citi Field right before batting practice on a Friday night when the Mets were slated to start a three game set against their division rivals, the Miami Marlins. The Marlins had been appallingly bad for several years running, basement dwellers of the NL East and the one team whose guaranteed losing record could assuage the sadness of Mets fans. Derek Jeter and his cohort of investors had bought the Marlins in August of 2017, however, and now the team was swatting its way to the top of the heap. Giancarlo Stanton was finally living up to his godlike potential and proving that he was worth his $325M contract. Even Bryce Harper of the Nationals couldn’t match Giancarlo’s stats. But it was still early in the season, still April, which meant there was still hope left for the Mets. 

After a quick introduction to the staff in the clubhouse, Klaus found his locker and dropped his duffel bag on the floor in front of it. His throat closed up momentarily as he stared at his name spelled out in block lettering on a shiny brass label over his locker. He had finally arrived. The Show. What had been a murky dream had snapped into focus at long last. It was real and he was here. He reached into the locker and grabbed the hanger, turned the neatly pressed uniform around in his shaking hands. They had assigned him the number thirteen, a number Klaus had always considered to be lucky. He ran his thumb across the one and three and thought that he had never seen a more lovely shade of blue outlined in orange. _Von Wolfstadt_ was spelled out in the same blue and orange in an arc that would run from shoulder blade to shoulder blade when worn. He hung the uniform back up and got into his practice t-shirt and jersey instead and headed out to the field, his heart thumping like a drum in his chest. 

Citi Field looked enormous and so green after the monotonous desert landscape of Nevada. Even the sea of blue seats appeared lush. He had already spoken briefly to his manager, Terry Collins, when he first arrived, and now Terry walked Klaus among the players, introducing him first to Kevin Plawecki and Travis d’Arnaud, their platoon catchers. Plawecki was nursing a bruised right hand, his throwing hand, after he had taken a foul ball off of it two nights ago, so d’Arnaud would be catching Noah Syndergaard tonight, always a bad idea. Terry didn’t plan on putting Klaus out there on his first day, but if things went haywire between Travis and Thor, he just might. 

Yoenis Céspedes was in the batting cage crushing balls deep into left center while José Reyes and Asdrúbral Cabrera stood to the side laughing and egging him on in Spanish. Klaus knew enough Spanish to understand that they were accusing Céspedes of taking pussy swings. The rest of the players were gathered in clumps on the field, shagging balls, doing their stretches and sprints, talking trash. The captain, David Wright, was chatting with the media and answering the usual questions about whether he would ever play again. Milling around the dugout were the pitchers. DeGrom wasn’t there, of course, but the others were drinking coffee and eating energy bars and goofing on each other while Noah went through his warm-up tosses on the sideline with one of the bullpen coaches catching. Matt Harvey sat on the bench in the far corner of the dugout with his hoodie up and speaking to no one. Klaus—never one to back down from a challenge—decided to tackle the Dark Knight first. 

As soon as he approached, Harvey muttered into the air straight ahead, “I’m here. I’m on time. I’m sober.” He turned and glowered at Klaus. “Now go fuck yourself on the foul pole.” Then he went back to murdering the entire world with hate thoughts. 

Klaus couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Same to you, douchebag.” He held out his hand and, after a brief hesitation, Matt shook it. 

“Welcome to Hell,” the Dark Knight intoned glumly. 

If this was Hell, thought Klaus, he was ready to get roasted. 

*** 

By the end of the game, Klaus—proud, card-carrying atheist that he was—began to wonder if he had erred badly on that count and that there was indeed an omniscient and omnipotent God who was now punishing him with relish for thinking that it would be fun to get roasted in Hell. Because, damn, he was getting roasted and it wasn’t even a tiny bit of fun. 

It was only the second inning and Warthen had already made four trips to the mound to chat with Noah and Travis. The rest of the infielders gathered around for the entertainment. Klaus had no idea what Warthen was telling the boys, but it didn’t take much to see that Noah and Travis weren’t on the same page. The way that Terry was maniacally clicking his BIC 4-color ball point pen and chewing his gum also spoke volumes. This pitcher-catcher combo was like oil and water, or nitroglycerin and a lit match. The explosion came on the very next pitch, a mere five minutes after Warthen was back in the dugout next to Terry. Giancarlo was at the plate with runners on first and third. Travis called for a change-up low and away hoping to get Stanton to chase a ball out of the zone. Noah threw a 102 mph fastball high and right down the middle instead. A loud crack reverberated through the stadium. 

In the SNY broadcast booth, Ron Darling announced drily, “Well, Gary, that one is, as you say, _outta here_.” 

“Ronnie,” Gary responded with equal aplomb, “I’m going to have to agree with you. That ball was _crushed_. I mean just…absolutely _pulverized_.” 

They both turned to Keith Hernandez, who just shook his head, too apoplectic to say anything beyond, “I’m speechless guys.” 

As Giancarlo finished rounding the bases and stepped on home plate, he whispered to Travis, “That kid just fucked you up the ass, didn’t he?” 

Travis cast his eyes sixty feet six inches forward at Noah nonchalantly rearranging the dirt on the mound and could swear that the tall blond was grinning behind his frozen mask of a face. Fine, Travis thought, have it your way, you big Nordic baby. The next batter was Christian Yelich. Travis laid down the sign for a fastball down Broadway. Yelich took it deep. From the far end of the dugout, Klaus could hear Matt Harvey roaring with laughter. It was now 4-1 Marlins and the crowd was booing loudly. Two outs later, Travis glanced to the third base coach for the sign, nodded, and set up. The batter was J.T. Realmuto, the catcher, who swung weakly at a ball in the dirt. Realmuto still managed to foul the ball right into Travis’s right thumb, fracturing the bone. After a fifteen-minute delay with the trainer assessing the damage, Terry signaled to Klaus: get your gear on. Klaus strapped on his shin guards and grabbed his mask and glove. What were the chances of the evening getting any worse?

Klaus had read all the scouting reports during the week leading up to this moment. He knew how Syndergaard liked to pitch—basically pedal to the metal all the way—and he figured he’d just turn the kid loose. His pitch count was only at thirty, so he knew he’d have plenty of gas left in the tank. Klaus nodded to Syndergaard, punched his fist into his glove to let him know it was ‘go time’ and crouched. The ball hit his glove and almost knocked him flat on his ass. It was like catching something shot out of a rocket launcher. By the middle of the sixth inning, when Terry made a pitching change, Klaus’s glove hand felt like ground beef. They were trailing 6-1, so Terry opted for a double switch, slotting Plawecki in behind the plate to give him some work and pulling Klaus out. 

“Nice job, Wolfstadt,” Terry said when Klaus was back in the dugout. “You did good out there.” 

“Ya think?” asked a disbelieving Klaus. He had felt like a drowning man just trying to keep his head above water. Plus, he had ground out to second and short during his two at-bats which meant he was rocking a 0.000 average. _Not_ a good start in his book. 

“Oh, yeah,” Terry insisted. “Danny didn’t have to go out to the mound once.” 

Klaus went to the cooler, drank six cups of Gatorade, and sat down on the bench by himself. Noah slowly ambled over, his arm wrapped in a towel, and shook his hand. “You’re the new guy,” Noah stated. 

“Yeah. Klaus von Wolfstadt. Nice to meet you. I knew you had a cannon for an arm, but, holy shit, you almost killed me out there.” 

Noah just gave him his usual wild-eyed stare. “Been trying to kill d’Arnaud for ages, but he just won’t die. See ya.”

Klaus watched Noah walk back down to the other end of the dugout where the pitchers were congregated and caught Matt Harvey’s smug expression tinged with pure hatred. Yeah. Hell was hot, and getting hotter by the minute.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

“Well?” 

“It was a shitshow, Claudia.” Klaus straightened up and cracked his neck, then his back, before taking his phone into the bathroom to brush his teeth. It was nine in the morning the next day and he had his older sister on speakerphone. Klaus had stayed in one of the team-owned condos near the stadium for the night but it was up to him to find a more permanent place to live. Klaus’s Uncle Hartmann, who worked at the United Nations, had set him up with a realtor at ten-thirty to look at apartment rentals. The game wouldn’t start until seven-thirty that evening, which meant that Klaus would have until three in the afternoon to hunt around. 

“Really? I thought you looked great out there,” Claudia said, ever the supportive big sister. Living in New Jersey meant she could get all the SNY broadcasts of the Mets games. “You didn’t seem nervous at all.” 

“It would have been better if I could’ve gotten a hit at least. Even a lousy walk.” 

“You had two at-bats, Klaus. Be patient.” She heard the water running and Klaus brushing his teeth, so she kept the conversation going on her end. “Besides, you’re there because they _want_ you there. Offense is great, but it’s what you can do _behind_ the plate that counts. And you’re going to shine, I know you will, you always do. What do you know about this new pitcher?” 

Klaus rinsed his mouth and looked at himself in the mirror: the mussed up blond hair, the square jaw, the impossibly gold-hued eyes. He _felt_ a lot older than he looked, and he thought he looked like shit. “Not a whole lot. He throws a nasty curve and a pretty good slider. His fastball tops out at around eighty-nine, ninety, though. Thank the fuck god. After catching Thor last night…shit, you should see my right hand.” Klaus held it palm up and marveled at all the different shades of purple and green. “This Reizen kid’s got a great record with the Giants in Tokyo. I’m surprised they’re letting him go but I heard he wanted to leave Japan. His hero is Yu Darvish apparently and, with Tanaka making such a big splash with the Yankees, well, I guess the kid wants his own shot at making it here. Hope he knows what he’s getting himself into.” Klaus rolled his broad shoulders, ran a hand down his ripped abs. “Listen, sis, I’ve gotta jump in the shower. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” 

“Okay, baby brother. Be good.” 

*** 

Three hours later, Klaus was sitting in a Starbucks with the realtor signing a lease on a shitty one-bedroom apartment located seven blocks from the stadium. It was a fifth floor walk-up on a block boasting a nail salon, a Jamaican take-out joint, a seedy liquor store, a Goodwill resale shop, a questionable deli, and a dance studio that held tai chi classes every Sunday morning. Across the street from his apartment building was a Szechuan restaurant that advertised karaoke on the weekends. Now _that_ could be interesting. The lease was still $2500 a month—a steal! his realtor told him—but at least the cable and utilities were included. He made it to Citi Field by quarter past three, just in time to join the festivities. 

Taki Reizen had arrived earlier in the day, just hours after he had stepped off the plane at JFK completely jet lagged and barely standing upright. He was being led around the clubhouse by manager Terry Collins and an older man who looked like he might be Taki’s uncle. Klaus dropped his change of clothes at his locker and joined the men crowded around the Mets’ newest pitcher. Klaus was a big man but, at six-foot-four, he wasn’t taller than a lot of the other players, especially Noah, next to whom he stood at least two inches shorter. Taki, though, was tiny, and slender to the point where if a strong gust of wind blew through the stadium, he could possibly be swept away with the hot dog wrappers. Only Jose Altuvé of the Houston Astros came close to how little Taki was, and Altuvé was five-foot-six. It was another half hour before Klaus worked his way through the mob of players to get close enough for Terry to introduce him to the young man he was brought in to mentor. 

The first thing Klaus noticed, aside from his small stature, was the color of the kid’s eyes. They were a deep, dark blue-black, like the sky at night, Klaus thought. And his hair. His hair was obsidian and glistened under the fluorescent lights, thick with a slight wave, a little messy, and long enough at the sides to frame a pale face with very delicate features. It was a refined face, pretty enough to be a girl’s. And what the hell was up with the kid's scent? He smelled like a bouquet of flowers, for fuck's sake! Klaus swallowed the uncomfortably large thistle that had materialized in his throat and then held out his hand. It looked like a bear’s paw when he clasped it around Taki’s elegant fingers. 

“Great to meet you, Taki,” Klaus said. “Looking forward to catching you.” 

The man who might have been Taki’s uncle spoke softly in Japanese into Taki’s ear. Taki nodded and bowed slightly to Klaus. “Thank you very much,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. 

Klaus found himself bowing back. He felt like a fool. Then Taki was whisked away to face a battalion of reporters before Klaus could introduce himself to the man translating for him and he was left standing alone wondering, _What next_? 

***

Steven Matz was pitching that night, Plawecki was catching. Taki had been taken to meet with Sandy Alderson and Fred Wilpon up in the owner’s suite upstairs, so Klaus sidled over to the pitchers sitting at their usual end of the dugout. He sat down next to Syndergaard, who regarded him mutely with his crazy eyes. 

“So, what d’ya think about that Reizen kid?” Klaus asked. 

Noah took a sip of water. “He’s really little.” 

“Yeah,” Klaus agreed. 

“And…” Noah watched Dee Gordon lace a single into right field to open the top of the first inning, “…he's really…exotic. He smells nice, too...kinda like roses.” 

Klaus stiffened involuntarily, especially when he heard Matt Harvey snort from the far corner of the bench and saunter past them to grab a bag of sunflower seeds from a bucket next to Klaus. 

“You two have hard-ons for him already? Get a fucking room.” 

Thor ignored the Dark Knight completely. Klaus got up and walked down to the other end of the dugout to sit by the bat boy. It was going to be another shitshow.

  


	4. Chapter 4

 

All through grade school and high school Klaus had waffled between playing baseball and hockey, his two great loves. He had grown up in a town just eleven miles outside of Manhattan where a Double-A baseball team played in a stadium a stone’s throw from his backyard. The New Jersey Devils practiced in an ice arena just two towns over. His heroes were Mike Piazza of the Mets and Jorge Posada of the Yankees, men who were as skilled behind the plate as they were standing in the batter’s box. On the other hand, the New Jersey Devils had won the Stanley Cup in 1995, 2000, and 2003, and those victories were as sweet as the World Series wins by the Yankees in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009. When Penn State offered him a baseball scholarship, he jumped at it. Being a catcher behind the plate or guarding the net as a goalie was almost interchangeable in his mind. So baseball it was. Besides, keeping his teeth wasn’t such a bad thing. 

He had done well enough during his stint with the Nittany Lions to be drafted into the Mets farm system after completing his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. If a career in baseball didn’t pan out, he figured he could always go back to school and earn a graduate degree and hopefully land a job at Boeing or NASA. His mother had been a stunt pilot and had inspired in him a love of flying, a love of the sky. There was something about the danger of crashing to the earth that gave him such a thrill. Playing a semi-violent sport provided that same rush of adrenalin, or maybe it was the blinding pain after taking a ball or puck in the chest that made him feel so alive. The difference didn’t matter. He was young and he had options and life was full of promise. 

After four years in Triple-A, though, the initial sheen of newness had worn awfully thin. The glamour of long road trips—a different city every few days!—had turned into tiresome drudgery when it meant sharing a room with a snoring teammate in cheap motels for weeks on end; that—along with the interminable bus rides during the night, the late meals at Denny’s or IHOP or Cracker Barrel, the routine of living out of a duffel bag, only to come home eventually to a dumpy rented apartment and a shitload of dirty laundry in that mirage in the desert—was something he had thought would be past him by now. He knew he was being unrealistic. Plenty of guys spend their entire baseball career stuck in Triple-A, or even Double-A if they are so unlucky, waiting for that phone call that never comes. But Klaus had given himself five years to succeed to the big leagues. If that deadline arrived without a call-up, then he would walk away and back onto a campus before his life passed him by. When that call did come, thanks to a Japanese pitcher who would require some strategic handholding, Klaus felt as if a gigantic weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. He didn’t think for a moment that he was merely proving an old idiom true: he was going from the frying pan into the fire. 

*** 

D’Arnaud was placed on the 60-day DL for the fractured thumb, so for their Sunday afternoon game with the Marlins, Terry Collins penned Klaus’s name into the lineup card. Steven Matz had had yet another rough outing the day before, tagged with six earned runs, three of which were homers in a pitcher-friendly park. Kevin Plawecki had been the only Mets batter with a hit in a game in which they were shut out 11-0, but his performance behind the plate had been abysmal, with four passed balls that led to two unearned runs. The Mets bullpen accounted for the rest of the self-inflicted damage. 

Klaus was excited to get the start. Taki wasn’t slated to pitch his first game until Tuesday, when the team would be in St. Louis to play the Cardinals. In fact, Klaus wouldn’t even see Taki until they were in St. Louis. Management had given Taki time to settle in to his apartment in Manhattan and then he’d meet the team in St. Louis, ostensibly free of jet lag and ready to pitch. So they had been told. Today Klaus would be catching Matt Harvey and he could only imagine what kind of mood the Dark Knight would be in when pitching a day game. The guy had a reputation for being a party animal, had been suspended for showing up trashed on a game day the year before, not counting all the times he had been privately reprimanded, warned, fined, spanked, what have you. While the players took batting practice, Klaus—armed with a stack of thick binders—sat down next to Harvey to go over the scouting reports and game plan. Matt wasn’t having any of it, though. 

“Look, Wolfenstein, let’s—“ 

“That’s _Wolfstadt_ , princess.” The Dark Knight might have been touted as the Mets savior at one point, but those days were long gone and Klaus knew it as surely as Harvey did whether Matt admitted to it or not. He might be a rookie, but Klaus wasn’t going to let this has-been prima donna walk all over him. “Do you want to win a game or not?” 

Matt shot Klaus a full-on sneer. “You don’t know jack shit, _Wolfburger_. I tell you what, let’s make a bet. If we win, I’ll buy you a steak dinner and all the bourbon you can pour down that gullet of yours. If it’s a bloodbath—and it _will_ be—you suck my cock. And you swallow.” 

That last part, the part involving sucking and swallowing, really threw Klaus off his game for a very long moment. He contemplated the three binders in his lap—they had stiff covers and were sturdy—and wondered if he’d get into too much trouble if he blugeoned Harvey to a pulp with them. Maybe he’d be doing everyone a favor instead? Then he gathered his wits and told Matt, “How about this: if we lose, _you_ suck my cock. And swallow. If we win, I’ll do the same for you.” 

Matt stared straight ahead at the bleachers in the far distance. Then he laughed and laughed. He had to wipe tears from his eyes by the time he finally got himself under control. “You are one cocky, fucked-up bastard, Wolfstadt. I think we’re gonna have us some fun out there today.” Then Matt shook his hand and they got down to discussing pitch sequences. 

*** 

The game was wild and wooly, mainly because Klaus had lit a massive bonfire under the Dark Knight’s ass and neither man wanted to suck the other one’s cock. Nor swallow. Harvey was like a man possessed, shaking Klaus off every other pitch it seemed, just to test him, push and prod and needle him, but Klaus had a mind like a trapdoor—he had always been good with numbers, with statistics—and he was going to prove to Matt that he knew how to call a game, how to play on a batter’s weaknesses, how to manipulate him into being undisciplined at the plate. Matt challenging him on every sign he laid down was pushing Klaus to go to Plan B or C, which had the unintended but serendipitous effect of flummoxing the batter. Nobody knew what the hell was going on between pitcher and catcher, including Dan Warthen, who kept trotting out to the mound to smooth things over. 

And Klaus got his first taste of Dan Warthen’s...coaching style, what Klaus would eventually call his _oeuvre_ and the reason the Mets pitchers were in such a quandary. 

“Okay, boys, what d’ya say we just settle down and go to our happy place, like, right now. I’ll start: Legoland. Okay. Matty, you’re next. Go to your happy place.” Warthen put his face right into Matt’s while Flores, Reyes, and Cabrera leaned in to listen intently. 

“Suzie’s Slut Palace,” said Matt in a monotone. 

“Right.” Warthen turned to face Klaus. “Now you, Wolfstadt. Happy place?” 

“Uh, Denny’s?” 

“Denny’s?” Warthen thoughtfully scratched at his left cheek. Then his eyebrows shot up over the black rims of his glasses. “Is that where you can get that breakfast sandwich, the one with the funny name? Let’s see—” 

“Moon Over My Hammy!” Wilmer interjected excitedly. It became instantly obvious to Klaus that Flores had spent his fair share of time in Triple-A, too. 

“Oh, I love those sandwiches!” That was the umpire, Angel Hernandez, who had come to the mound to break up the powwow. “C’mon, guys, the natives are getting restless.” 

Warthen jogged back to the dugout and everyone else returned to their positions. Klaus could barely contain his disbelief. _This_ is what Warthen talks about on the mound? Your happy place? But Warthen wasn’t one-dimensional, or even two-dimensional. The man was freaking _deep_. The next time they gathered on the mound—Dee Gordon was on second, Ozuna was on first, and Stanton was at the plate ready to rack up another three RBIs—Warthen threw out another gem. 

“Okay, boys. Settle the fuck down and tell me this: first time you got to third base.” 

Everyone looked at each other in confusion. Then Cabrera piped up. “You mean in baseball, or with, like, a girl?” 

Warthen tossed his head right and left, like a tree blowing in the wind, and sighed with frustration. “With a girl of course!”

The guys all nodded fervently and mumbled answers in turn. When Klaus muttered, “Fifth grade,” everyone gasped in horror. He shrugged and explained, “I was an early bloomer.” 

“You mean you were a horny little pervert,” Matt accused with a straight face. 

“No way, man,” Klaus shot back defensively. “She was in fifth grade, too, so that makes me NOT a pervert!” 

“Yeah?” Matt countered. “I’ll bet you were jerking off to your mom’s Cosmo sex surveys.” 

Now Angel Hernandez was dying to know. He wasn’t even trying to move things along at this point. “Those Cosmo surveys are a bitch,” Angel conceded. “They always make us men look so…inadequate. Like how many times do they have to talk about penis size not mattering to women. You know that’s a total LIE.” 

All the guys nodded in agreement, although nobody was going to say if it was about penis size not mattering or if it was about women being consummate liars about penis size not mattering. 

The game was tied 3-3 when Terry Collins took Harvey out of the game in the seventh inning with two out. The Mets ended up winning 4-3 when Klaus batted in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. It was a soft liner over the shortstop's head, but it got the job done and Klaus was rewarded with a brutal pummeling by his teammates and a cooler of Gatorade dumped over his head. Later, in the locker room before press interviews, Matt walked up to a drenched Klaus and snickered, “You owe me a you-know-what.” 

“Fuck you, asshole.” Klaus stood bare-chested and sticky and very, very confident. “The game was tied when you got pulled. We won because of _me_ , so I guess I’ll have to blow myself.” 

“Wrong. Nobody said anything about _how_ we won. And _you_ were the one who said you’d suck my cock if we won, so there. Get those lips nice and wet, rookie, because I plan on taking my sweet time coming.” Harvey had the nerve to slap Klaus on the ass as he sauntered off to the showers. 

“Shit,” Klaus muttered. Then he decided he’d better hit that liquor store by his apartment on the way home. He didn’t know _what_ he’d say to his sister.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who might be reading this story for the Maiden Rose angle—and wondering WTF?—I apologize for taking so long to get to Taki. I really wanted to indulge my abject love for baseball upfront, just to get it out of the way, so I could then get down to the business of shipping Taki/Klaus, probably the only canon element in this story. I promise I WILL get to Taki and Klaus and, yeah, they will engage in some vigorous banging, and I will do my best to make it FILTHY and maybe even ROMANTIC and ANGSTY in deference to the great Inariya-sensei. Wish me luck.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Taki had been a good boy, despite being smaller than his peers in school and hating all the teasing he had to endure, he had still been obedient, had never missed a kendo practice or a piano lesson, had memorized the classic poetry of the Edo period under the unflinching eyes of his private tutor, all so he would be allowed to indulge his one passion: baseball. 

“You are from an ancient lineage,” his father had told him. “Baseball is beneath you.” 

But his mother Sakuya, who was fierce and passionate and beautiful, had been the one he had taken after in temperament and in looks and she had encouraged his passion. So he wouldn’t back down, not even to his father. Pity she was gone from him and his younger sister Yura so soon. Taki’s father had remarried after the proper period of mourning, but his stepmother was unassuming and too sickly and tired after bearing a triplet of daughters to bother with Taki. He had been a decent older brother to his half-sisters through the years, had done everything right, all for the love of baseball. 

Japan had a long history of baseball. The sport had been introduced to the country in 1872 and—aside from Ichiro Suzuki, an outfielder who had already been a star with the Orix Blue Wave in Japan before embarking on an even more stellar career with the Seattle Mariners in America, and Hideki Matsui, who had been a huge fan favorite as a New York Yankee—almost all the Japanese players who had made a success of themselves in the States had been pitchers, so that’s what Taki had worked so hard to be: a pitcher. Taki didn’t want to do anything half-assed. He was either going to make it big or go down in flames. His mother would have accepted no less from him. 

*** 

Taki was dead tired as he gazed out the window of his eleventh floor condo in Chelsea. His family had purchased the two-bedroom unit in the starchitect-designed building as an investment property as soon as the plans had been approved six years ago. His family was wealthy, even if all the wealth originated from his deceased mother’s side, the ‘aristocratic’ side of the family. His uncle, the older brother of his mother, was considered Japanese ‘royalty’ and had looked after his nephew after the death of Sakuya. It was his uncle who had approved Taki’s request to go to the States, perhaps against his uncle’s better judgment. At least, that is what Suguri thought to himself as he unpacked some of Taki’s clothes. 

Suguri had been a longtime family friend and Taki’s physician since Taki was a boy. Taki thought of him as a second father and, in many ways, Suguri was more influential than the man Taki had addressed as _otosan_. _Otosan_ had never ventured outside of Japan, but Suguri had studied at Oxford in England and at Princeton in America. Suguri was fluent in English and could sing the most beautiful love songs in a voice that made Taki’s heart ache with sorrow before he even understood what it was to yearn for another. 

Taki’s uncle had allowed him to pursue his baseball dreams in America under one condition: he would be chaperoned and kept under strict supervision. Suguri had volunteered readily, even though it meant leaving his own wife. They had no children of their own, but Taki was like a son to him, so he went, hoping secretly that the boy would tire of his adventure in a year and return home contrite and ready to settle down to an arranged marriage. The boy was young and naïve, as many boys his age tended to be, so Suguri was content to bide his time. And now with the death of Taki's father, Suguri felt more responsible than ever for the boy's safety and well-being. 

“We could go to Soho if you’re up for it,” Suguri suggested. “There’s a Yohji Yamamoto store there. We could find something more fashionable than jeans for you, Taki-sama.” Even though Taki was many years his junior, Suguri was as old-school as they came, and he always used the honorific worthy of the status held by Taki’s family. 

Taki nodded to the older man. “Yes, Suguri-san. Let’s go.” He was homesick already and feeling more than a little guilty for leaving his sister Yura in the lurch. He was the firstborn and an only son, but now the burden of looking after a sickly stepmother and three younger siblings was on her shoulders. For her sake, he couldn't fail. “How many yukatas did you pack for me?” 

“Three,” Suguri replied. “Should I send for more?” 

“No.” Taki watched the throngs of people walking the High Line running right beneath his building. “I doubt I’ll have much opportunity to relax here.” 

*** 

Suguri traveled with Taki to St. Louis. The Mets’ Japanese interpreter, Ryuichi Watanabe, was there to meet them at the airport alongside an aide from personnel to take them to the Hyatt Regency near the iconic Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch. Busch Memorial Stadium, with its spectacular roof crowned with ninety-six arches designed by Edward Durrell Stone in a nod to Saarinen’s masterpiece, had been torn down in 2005 to make way for a new-fangled one with all the modern amenities. It was a shame, but such was the fad for all the bells and whistles over the simple act of sitting and watching a game, God forbid. 

“The rest of the team arrived yesterday,” Watanabe informed them. Monday had been a travel day, but Taki had been allowed an extra day in New York to settle in. “We’ll go to the hotel first so you can check in to your room, and then we can head to the stadium before batting practice begins.” 

Taki was slated to pitch a night game and he had studied the scouting reports on the plane ride over. He was anxious to get on the mound and acclimate himself. He was anxious to know how, and _if_ , he would connect with his catcher, a man with golden hair and golden eyes. When he had met the man in the clubhouse at Citi Field, he had hidden his surprise with a bow, and then he had been led away by his new manager for interviews with the New York sports media. He had been too jet lagged and overwhelmed to think about the lurch in his stomach and the way his legs had wanted to give out beneath him. This man had triggered a distant memory, a memory that had the surreal makings of a dream. 

Taki had been ten years old when his family had last traveled to Kyoto for a rare appearance by the emperor and his royal entourage. Since his mother and uncle were distant relations of the emperor, Taki had worn his ceremonial robe and headdress and had walked with his family in the procession to the former Imperial Palace. Afterwards, he had escaped his minders and wandered in the gardens unattended, flitting around like a crazed butterfly and enjoying a rare moment of freedom in a highly regimented life. The wisteria were in full bloom and the lilac petals rained down like snow with every breeze. It was like winter in early May. He had wanted to pluck some of the flowers to give to his mother and sister but, being frustratingly small, nothing was in reach. 

“Shit, fuck, damn,” Taki had muttered to himself. He had heard Suguri use those naughty words when he was annoyed with something or other, so Taki had said the same words as he strained to reach the heavy clusters over his head. He loved Suguri, admired and respected him, more so than his own father, and what was good enough for Suguri-san was good enough for him.

And then Taki had seen him, a boy older and much taller than himself, a boy with golden hair and golden eyes wearing a tan suit and a dark tie. He had appeared like an apparition. Had the gods sent him? Taki had wondered. “Take me over to those flowers,” Taki had asked the taller boy and, just like that, the foreigner had swept him up in his arms, had plucked a cluster of wisteria and held the fragrant blossoms to his face. Taki had reached out and touched the other boy’s cheek. “Will you be mine?” Taki had asked without even understanding what he was asking for. That night and for years after, Taki had made vows to his gods, burned incense to them, written his prayers and wishes down on countless pieces of paper, if only the gods would make him tall like that golden-haired, golden-eyed boy. They didn't, but they had given him something else: a nasty curve and a wicked slider and the stubborn determination to stand tall on his own.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the manga, Taki's uncle is the emperor himself, but I didn't think it would fly in this contemporary AU. Would a nephew of the emperor of Japan even be allowed to play baseball? Doubtful.


	6. Chapter 6

 

New Busch Stadium was pretty spectacular, seating well over 45,500, and it looked to be at capacity tonight. Attendance had been down last year after an unusually disappointing season by the Cardinals, but this year Adam Wainwright was healthy and _dealing_ and Yadier Molina was experiencing some kind of resurgence. Even though it was still April and he would turn thirty-six later in the year, Yadier already had six home runs under his belt. If he maintained this pace, he’d rack up twice what he had managed the year before. Rumors had already begun circulating about PEDs; after all, his numbers were improving at an age when performance normally declined. Klaus, though, wasn’t about to second-guess Molina. The man was and would always be an absolute _stud_ , an all-star catcher and someone who was destined to be voted into the Hall of Fame. During batting practice, Klaus walked over to enemy territory and asked Molina for his autograph, rookie catcher face to face with veteran catcher. Molina was a gentleman, even if Klaus’s Spanish was atrocious. 

“Leesson, bro, joos speeek Eeenglish,” Yadier told him as he signed one of Klaus’s t-shirts. His English was as hard to understand as Klaus’s Spanish. 

“Thanks, man,” Klaus gushed, “I’ve admired you for so long—“ 

“Hey,” Yadier interrupted. “I’m not _that_ old. Good luck tonight. That kid’s really young, isn’t he?” 

“Barely twenty,” said Klaus.

“Mierda.” Yadier shook his head. “What I’d give to be that young again...” 

Both men were distracted by a murmur that rose around them. They turned to see the local and national sportscasters, as well as the contingent of Japanese media covering Taki’s US debut, swarm around tonight’s starting pitchers, who were shaking hands in front of the St. Louis dugout with the Cardinals manager, Mike Matheny, serving as master of ceremonies. Mets manager Terry Collins was lost in the crowd. Adam Wainwright stood six-foot-seven and was stooping low at the waist to speak to Taki while Watanabe translated. Taki was standing ramrod straight and, somehow, as incongruous as it was, the kid held his ground like a tiny black kitten staring down a Great Dane. Neither Klaus nor Yadier could hear the conversation between the two, but Wainwright’s posture said it all. He was _deferring_ to someone over fifteen years his junior, at least twelve inches shorter, and a good eighty pounds lighter. Wainwright was, like Yadier, a stud, a proven star, what people in the game referred to reverentially as a workhorse, but right now he might as well be the one making his first major league start in America. 

“Jesucristo,” Yadier mumbled, “he’s like…un niño.” 

“Yeah.” Klaus nodded. “Thanks for wishing me luck. I’ll take all I can get.” 

*** 

Klaus walked back into the locker room to stash his signed t-shirt and came across the man who was Taki’s chaperone. He had heard from the other guys that the man was named Suguri and that he would be accompanying Taki on both home and away games. It was a rather odd arrangement in Klaus’s mind—Taki was over eighteen after all and not a minor—but Japanese pitchers seemed to fall under a category all their own, which included perks like having an assigned interpreter, something the Spanish-speaking players resented since they were expected to sink or swim all on their own. 

This man Suguri looked to be in his fifties, with a lean hard frame, dark hair and chiseled features, and would be considered quite handsome if it weren’t for his stern, unsmiling demeanor. Klaus saw him sitting in the clubhouse’s ‘media’ room where he was playing _Halo_ with one of the equipment managers and totally kicking ass. Klaus watched in amazement as Suguri/Master Chief drove the warthog up a grassy embankment, leapt out of the vehicle and proceeded to mow down twelve Covenant grunts with a series of lethal assault rifle rounds and perfectly tossed grenades. 

“Fucking A!” shouted Jason, whose avatar was standing at the back of the warthog manning the machine gun. 

“I’m going to take that Elite out with the sniper rifle,” Suguri told him in his deep gravelly voice. The man was all business, like General freaking MacArthur. “You hit him with your plasma pistol in case I don’t get a clean shot at his head.” 

“I'm on it!” 

Suguri made the shot, the Elite crumpled to the ground, and he and Jason high-fived. Then they both noticed Klaus standing to the side with his mouth open. Suguri looked Klaus straight in the eyes and Klaus could literally feel his testicles run and hide. 

“D-Don’t let me interrupt,” Klaus stammered. “At ease, soldiers.” He made a lame attempt at a salute and then got the hell out of there. 

*** 

Taki stood up from where he was sitting on the bench as Klaus walked up carrying the binders. He looked a bit out of sorts. The interpreter, Ryuichi Watanabe, stood up next to Taki and both men bowed to Klaus. Feeling like a fool again, Klaus bowed back and blurted out, “Look, can we dispense with the formalities? This really isn’t my style.” 

Taki stared up at him, his mouth a pink rosebud on the cusp of blooming. Watanabe was speechless for a moment, and then he whispered something to Taki. Taki nodded but kept silent. 

Klaus, always the proactive guy, decided to jump in. “Listen, Taki, I’m just a regular Joe Schmo and this whole bowing thing is just…I dunno…can we get past that?” 

Watanabe listened carefully to what Klaus was saying and then proceeded to speak for a good minute to Taki in Japanese. As rusty as Klaus’s kindergarten-level Japanese was, he could swear he heard Watanabe use the word ‘baka’ more than once. Shit. It suddenly occurred to Klaus that he might have accidentally put his foot in his mouth. In the one year he had lived in Japan as a teenager, he had never heard anyone being addressed by a first name. Only family names were used, and always in conjunction with an honorific of one sort or another. 

Klaus jumped in again, hoping to avert a disaster. “So, uh, Mr. Watanabe. What’s the problem?” 

Watanabe bowed and said, “No problem, sir.” 

 _Ah ha! Gotcha!_ That was another typical Japanese habit Klaus remembered. They were always too fucking polite to say no or admit that something was wrong. “Okay, tell me this, Mr. Watanabe: what do _you_ call him?” Klaus pointed to Taki and Watanabe almost fainted with embarrassment. Taki smiled down at his feet and waited patiently for Watanabe to recover. 

Watanabe cleared his throat as he fought to maintain some semblance of dignity. The Reizen family was known to all Japanese. It was a family that could trace its ancestry all the way back to the time when the gods mingled with mortals according to legend. Even if one didn’t believe such mythology, it was an established fact that the Reizen lineage was ancient and noble and highly respected. 

“Mr. Wolfstadt, the proper address would be Taki-sama,” Watanabe said gravely. 

Klaus scratched his chin. “Sama? Hmm…remind me again what that means?” 

“It means ‘lord’ or 'master' and I assure you it is the proper way to address—“ 

This time Taki cleared his throat and whispered something to Watanabe, who promptly went red in the face. He turned to Klaus and said with reluctance, “Taki-sama says you don’t have to use the honorific.” 

“Fine. Works for me. Now how about we go over these scouting reports, Taki?” 

They sat back down on the bench and went through the Cardinals line-up, discussed each player’s tendencies in the batter’s box and how they could capitalize on their weaknesses. Klaus was surprised at how familiar Taki seemed to be with players he had never faced before. What it would come down to tonight, then, was Taki’s command of his pitches. But what Klaus really wanted to speak to Taki about was this Suguri fellow, like, who the fuck was he? The man’s English was perfect, he was a kick-ass Master Chief, and he scared the shit out of Klaus. How the hell was he supposed to mentor Taki with a guy like _that_ looking over his shoulder? And he had yet to be formally introduced to him. How low would he have to bow to him? Would he have to get down on his knees? And would he have to call him ‘sama’ too? Klaus wanted to ask a slew of other questions but decided now wasn’t the right time. Taki still needed to stretch and throw and Klaus needed to take batting practice after that. The game came first and he wanted to succeed. He wanted Taki to succeed, too, just so he wouldn’t have to face Suguri’s wrath.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: there's some dub-con fellatio in this chapter, accompanied by loud whistling.

 

The Mets won the game 3-2. Taki threw seven shutout innings and gave up only five hits, all singles, when Terry decided to pull him with runners on first and second. His pitch count was at ninety-five and their bullpen was warmed up and ready to go, so he got yanked. As Terry made the pitching change with the umpire, Klaus and the infielders gathered at the mound to congratulate Taki on a job well-done. Klaus began the round robin with a firm slap on Taki’s ass, as if that was supposed to make him feel better, and the rest of the guys enthusiastically followed suit. Taki was mortified. What’s with the public spanking? In Japan, he might have garnered a respectful tap on the shoulder or arm with a gloved hand but a barehanded touch below the waist was unthinkable. Suguri-san would _not_ be happy if he saw. 

“You did great, kid,” Klaus told him and his teammates all nodded in agreement because it was no lie. Taki had been precise and efficient on the mound. All Klaus had to do was lay down the sign, set his glove, and the ball would hit the target. It was almost too easy. For Taki’s two at-bats, Wainwright had struck him out on three pitches, all fastballs, the first time, but then he walked him the second time and Taki got to stand on first base and enjoy a view of the stadium from a different perspective. It was a sea of red and it was sweet. 

After Taki was pulled, the Mets reliever, Jeurys Familia, promptly gave up a double, and both runners charged to Taki scored. But then the Mets came back in the top of the eighth with a run and capped off the ninth with two more runs and that meant more ass-slapping in the clubhouse and a celebratory dinner for the team afterwards at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in downtown St. Louis. 

“Beginner’s luck,” the Dark Knight teased in the locker room as Klaus stripped off his sweaty uniform before hitting the showers. 

“Whatever, dickhead,” Klaus shot back. “Any kind of luck is better than no luck.” 

“Speaking of dicks,” Matt whispered into Klaus’s ear, “you still owe me.” Then he walked away, ignoring the curious look that Syndergaard gave him. 

“What’s that about?” Noah asked in his usual monotone. His locker was right next to Klaus’s and he was already showered and dressed in an embarrassing Hawaiian print shirt. 

“Nothing,” Klaus muttered. “Just some stupid bet.” He sighed deeply. They had been given their room assignments when they had first arrived at the hotel the day before and, to Klaus’s horror, he found that he had been paired up with Matt, probably because Klaus was the new guy and it was his turn to put up with the Dark Knight’s sour attitude. Matt had passed out drunk the night before but Klaus figured that tonight was his own night to get plastered. Kevin Plawecki was catching Noah tomorrow and if Klaus was going to have to gag himself on Matt’s cock, then he didn’t want to remember any of it. 

*** 

By the time Taki was settled into his hotel room after the dinner with his teammates, it was lunchtime the next day in Tokyo. Azusa, Date, and Moriya were huddled around a table at Taki’s favorite maid café in Akihabara—Akiba Zettai—their heads knocking together so they could all be seen on the laptop as they Skyped. Akiba Zettai had been their go-to eatery for pre- or post-game meals when Taki played for the Giants in Tokyo. Azusa had been his catcher, Date and Moriya fellow pitchers on the team, and the four of them had known each other since they were children, having played on the same Little League circuit. Taki could see that they had all ordered the classic omelet rice dish. Some sexy ‘maid’ wearing cat ears had surely drawn the smiley faces in ketchup on their fluffy omelets; it was _that_ kind of place and it made Taki depressed to see what he was missing. The Mets players had selected a steakhouse for dinner and Taki had been reduced to eating a bizarre Chilean sea bass entrée served with a sweet potato and pineapple hash topped with an even weirder citrus coconut butter, at least that was what the menu said it was. But it was Taki’s own fault that he didn’t partake of the aged prime rib or the generous amounts of alcohol flowing around the table. 

For the last ten years, Taki had made all sorts of promises to his gods in exchange for their help in fulfilling his wishes—to grow tall, to pass his exams, to perfect a curveball, to get a girl in seventh grade to fall in love with him, to win a championship game. Sometimes the gods listened, sometimes they didn’t, but when he was sixteen and the scouts started coming to his games looking for pitching prospects, he gambled big and went all-in, vowing to forgo meat and alcohol and sex before marriage if he were selected. The Tokyo Yomiuri Giants drafted him at seventeen, and by the time he was eighteen, he had already made his major league debut, so he couldn’t renege on those last sacred vows. It was only after the fact that he realized he had doomed himself—even as he enjoyed all the adulation and benefits of success in public, his private life was miserably lonely. 

It hadn’t been easy to keep true to that vow to remain ‘unbroken’ and pure, especially since he and his teammates were frequenting a cosplay bar in Shinjuku where all the buxom, scantily clad servers dressed like the female characters from _Final Fantasy_. When the one kitted up to look like Yuna leaned over Taki to serve him his virgin margarita one night, he got an eyeful of her generous cleavage and creamed his pants right there. He was so grateful that he was wearing black jeans and that it was dark in the room, and as gross as it was to spend the next two hours marinating in sticky cum, he had only himself to blame for being nineteen and untouchable. Azusa, Date, and Moriya had never made such ridiculous vows. They could eat as much savory meat as they wanted, drink sake and beer to their hearts’ content, fuck as many girls as they desired. They knew about Taki's vows and, being baseball players and neurotically superstitious, they respected the kind of courage, commitment and sacrifice it took for Taki to abide by them. They did their best to cheer him up, but at the end of the day, it was Taki who went home alone and sober and _wanting_. 

“Chibi-tan!” Date grinned into the laptop camera. “You were amazing out there. It was worth getting up at five in the morning to watch. I had to drink six cups of espresso to wake up. Can you tell?” 

Moriya pushed Date aside. “Your slider was unhittable, chibi-tan. The way the bottom kept dropping out of it: un-fucking-believable.” 

“What’s with that Goliath behind the plate?” Azusa asked. “It must be like aiming at a billboard.” 

“Yeah,” Taki said. “He seems like a good catcher, although, Suguri-san thinks he’s too…handsy.” 

“That’s the American way,” Date assured him. “They’re all touchy-feely.” 

Later that night, as Taki lay in bed, he thought about the barmaid dressed like Yuna, the one with the incredible tits. Suguri-san was sitting up in the other bed reading a book on animal husbandry, so Taki rolled to his side facing the other way and discreetly gave his cock a few loving strokes before resigning himself to a pair of blue balls. He drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of someone whistling a happy tune. 

*** 

In the next room, Klaus was hating himself and making his own vows. 

“I will never ever make a bet with the Dark Knight ever again, so help me God!” 

Matt hadn’t been kidding about taking his sweet time coming. From his position kneeling on the floor, Klaus had a clear line of sight to the clock sitting on the night table so he knew for a fact that a good twenty-five minutes had elapsed since Matt had whipped out his cock and Klaus had commenced some very reluctant sucking. 

“Are you even _trying_ , Wolfstadt? I’d get more suction out of a broken vacuum cleaner.” Matt was sitting naked at the edge of his bed leaning back on his hands as he stared down at Klaus with marked disapproval. 

Klaus pulled off Matt’s cock and scowled up at him. “Fuck you, man. It’s not like I do this everyday.” 

“Ah. But you’ve done it before? All shitty like you’re doing it now?” 

“No, that’s not what I said. I usually don’t get sick requests like this, okay? One of these days, you’re gonna—“ 

Matt shoved his cock back into Klaus’s mouth. “We can do this all night if you want, Wolfie. I’m in no hurry.” At that, Matt reclined fully onto the bed, crossed his arms under his head for a pillow, and started whistling the opening theme song from _The Andy Griffith Show._  

After another fifteen minutes of tortured licking and listening to whistled theme songs from _The Brady Bunch_ and _The Flintstones_ , Klaus pulled off again. “For fuck's sake, can’t you at least look at some porn on your phone?” He wiped the spit off his chin and massaged his lower jaw. “C’mon, man, help me out here.” 

“Nope.” 

“Fucking hell.” Klaus gestured helplessly at the television tuned to ESPN with the sound off. “Well then, let me at least put the pay-per-view channel on,” he pleaded. 

“Nope.” 

Klaus huffed out an angry breath and wiped his mouth again. He wished his sister Claudia were here. She'd rip that asshole to pieces. “Fine. Have it your way, you pathetic loser.”

That only made Matt laugh up at the ceiling. “Bring it on, pussy.” 

With one final gargantuan effort, Klaus spit into his hand and wrapped it firmly around Matt’s cock and dove in with a hearty slurp. He pumped his fist hard, way harder than he’d strip his own cock, but Matt seemed to love it. The bastard was a masochist. 

“Yeah, suck that chrome off my tail pipe,” Matt ordered. “Flog that horse dick.” 

 _What the fuck?_ No wonder the other players refused to room with the Dark Knight. The guy was way too talky in the sack. Klaus felt Matt’s hands at the sides of his head and hoped that it meant that he was getting close at last. Klaus’s jaw was positively aching and he wanted this _over with_ , goddamn it! How did women ever manage this? They deserved gold medals, for Christ’s sake. He felt Matt tense up and then grunt loudly and shudder. What came after—the swallowing—was even worse than the sucking. Gold medals, thought Klaus. Yeah. Gold medals for all women.

  


	8. Chapter 8

When the team returned to Citi Field after a sixteen-day road trip in which they played the Cardinals, the Rockies, and the Dodgers, Taki had two wins and a no-decision for the three games that he started and an ERA of just 1.95. Klaus was having so much fun catching him, not even the Dark Knight and the memory of that stomach-turning blowjob could ruin his day. With d’Arnaud out for three months, Kevin Plawecki was the starting catcher, which meant Klaus only saw action every five days when Taki was slated to pitch. It was hard to get comfortable in the batter’s box with so little playing time, but Klaus had still managed a few hits and a double in his limited at-bats. He had made progress, too, in other ways. He’d finally introduced himself to that Suguri fellow and lost very badly playing Mario Kart with him, and had started seriously brushing up on his long-forgotten Japanese. The flight out to Los Angeles from Denver had prompted it when he had sat next to Noah and noticed that he was taking a “How to Speak Japanese” tutorial on his iPad. 

Klaus tapped him on the shoulder to get him to take off his earbuds. “What’s up with that?” he asked. 

“I’m trying to learn a little Japanese,” Noah stated flatly.

“No kidding. Why?” 

“I dunno.” Noah shrugged and looked slowly around the plane cabin. Then he whispered, “I thought it would make a good impression if I could learn a few phrases.” 

“Make a good impression? With who?” Klaus whispered back. 

“Are you dense?” asked Noah. “With Taki, of course.” 

“He’s got Watanabe and that scary Suguri guy. Just speak English and they’ll interpret for you.” 

“I _know_ that, Einstein. But how am I supposed to impress him by speaking English?” Noah rolled his eyes. “Besides, Suguri-san would probably chop my head off if he knew what I…never mind.”

“Knew what?” Now Klaus was riveted like some kvetching housewife over rumors of someone’s suspected infidelity. Syndergaard, though, wasn’t giving anything away. “Tell me!” Klaus insisted. “Why would Suguri want to chop your head off? What were you planning on doing?” 

“Nothing. Maybe, you know, ask him out for drinks.” 

“Who? Taki? He’s not allowed to…wait a minute. You mean like…a _date_?” Klaus was ready to leap down Noah’s throat and tear out his guts with his bare hands. “You want to ask him out on a fucking date?” 

“I dunno, man. Whatever. Keep your voice down.” 

“Jesus Christ.” Klaus gripped the armrests to calm himself. He didn’t know why he felt so angry of a sudden, like he wanted to punch Noah in his big, dumb, Viking face and then rip out that food tray from the seat in front of him and smash it over Syndergaard’s skull until it was reduced to shards of jagged bone. “You do that and  _I’ll_ chop your head off,” he muttered under his breath. 

“What? You think just because you _catch_ him, you’ve got first dibs on him or something?” Noah accused. 

“First dibs? What are you? In fourth grade?” 

Noah snorted in disgust. “Oh, spare me. You think you own him or something? Like he’s yours?” 

“When did I ever say that?” 

“Maybe you never _said_ it, but you sure act like—“ 

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Klaus interrupted. 

“Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!” Noah retorted. 

Matt popped his head up from the seat in front of them and smirked, “Okay, girls. Calm the fuck down.” He looked at Noah and said, “Hey, Thor, is that tutorial any good? I’m thinking of learning some Japanese myself.” 

Noah gave him the finger, put on his earbuds, and went back to his language lesson. 

Matt winked at Klaus and sneered, “Get ready for some competition, Hot Lips.” 

“Call me that again,” Klaus threatened, “and you’re a dead man.” Then he logged onto his phone and did a search for Japanese language apps. 

*** 

Well, back in New York, things were _on_ between the three of them. They had each decided upon nicknames for Taki, a longstanding baseball tradition. Noah, desperate ass-kisser that he was, opted to go with the incredibly boring Taki-sama, which Ryuichi Watanabe and Suguri-san had declared was the correct way of addressing someone of Taki’s status in Japan. Matt called him Strawberry Shortcake, because Matt was an asshole and had seen Taki drinking some weird Japanese strawberry drink that Suguri had given him in the clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. Klaus, after some internal debate, arrived at Chibitan, because he was an even smugger asshole than the Dark Knight and he knew it would irritate the hell out of Taki to be called the equivalent of 'super cute short stuff.' To call any Japanese male over the age of five ‘cute’ or 'short' anything was a huge insult and Klaus was going to milk it for all it was worth. Except. Suguri overheard Klaus using that nickname in the locker room with Taki and totally reamed him out afterwards.

“Who do you think you are?” Suguri growled. “Do you have any idea who Taki-sama is?” Suguri looked Klaus up and down with withering contempt. “You’re nothing but a feral dog.” Then he led Taki away by the arm while Klaus stood dripping after his shower wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. 

The next day, Klaus apologized to Taki in Japanese; he knew enough to say, ‘Gomen nasai!” Klaus wanted his pro career to last longer than a few weeks and he was pretty sure Suguri had it out for him. Was the man yakuza or something? He certainly looked like someone who knew how to fire a gun or swing a sword and Klaus was a mighty big target. 

Taki had merely sighed as he changed into his uniform and said in perfect English, “It’s alright. I don’t mind.” Taki’s teammates in Japan had called him Chibtan as well. 

“W-Wait a minute,” Klaus stuttered. “You speak English?” 

Taki blushed a deep red. “Perhaps…a little. We all learn it in grade school.” 

“So, uh…do you even know who Strawberry Shortcake is?” Yeah! Klaus thought. That was genius! Lay all the blame at Matt’s feet. Don’t let Taki focus on the fact that Klaus was guilty of calling him Chibitan. 

“Yes,” Taki said quietly. “I looked it up on Google. I don’t understand. Strawberry Shortcake is a _girl_.” Taki looked Klaus straight on with his blue-black eyes. “Is that what Harvey-san thinks of me? Is that what _you_ think of me?” 

Klaus gulped. “No. No one thinks you’re…you know what? Fuck him. Fuck that son of a bitch. You’ve got a better record than that douchebag, so ignore him.” Klaus reached out and gripped Taki on the shoulder. “The only thing that matters is what you do on the mound and, kid, you’re killing it. So ignore him. I’ve got your back.” 

Taki was looking up at him with those beautiful eyes and out of freaking nowhere Klaus wanted to sweep him up into his arms like he had done with that boy in the Imperial Gardens that day so long ago. He had smelled such fragrant flowers and didn't Taki smell the same? He wouldn’t let anyone hurt Taki, insult him (except himself, of course), come between Taki and…what? What? Then Noah walked into the locker room and spoiled the moment. 

“Kon’nichiwa,” Noah said to Taki with a bow. He held out a plastic bag. “I thought you might like this.” 

Taki reached into the bag and pulled out a bottle of Ramune strawberry soda. It was his favorite drink. “Ah!” Taki’s face brightened with a rare smile. “How did you know I like this?” 

Noah smiled back. “Suguri-san told me.” 

Klaus straightened up and clenched his fists. The Dark Knight wasn’t his enemy, even if Matt was a loser and a scumbag. No. It was Thor. _This_ was the man he’d have to outdo if he had any hope of…Jesus…what the fuck was going on? Wasn’t Taki under his care? And now wolves were surrounding him and…shit…was _he_ one of the wolves? No. He wasn’t like Matt or Noah. He was better than that. He was pure and honest and…Taki. Taki. Don’t smile back at Noah. Noah is just out to grope you in some dark corner, not like me. I wouldn’t do that. I’d…make sweet love to you. Fuck! When had he turned into some oversized pervert? No, no, no! 

“Ah! Thank you!” Taki was saying to Noah. 

“Hey, Taki-sama, I know this great sushi place in Soho. Blue Ribbon? Have you heard of it?” asked Noah. 

“Yes, of course.” Everyone turned as Suguri walked into the locker room. “It has a very decent reputation.” 

How does this guy know _everything_? thought Klaus. He suddenly felt at a huge disadvantage but he wasn’t going to let this video game-yakuza kingpin and this modern day Viking one-up him. “There’s this Szechuan restuarant across the street from my apartment,” Klaus blurted out. “They have karaoke on the weekends—“ 

“Karaoke?” Suguri asked a little too enthusiastically. Taki gasped in horror. 

“Uh…yeah,” Klaus replied. He looked from Taki to Suguri, Suguri to Taki, wondering what steaming pile of dog shit he had just stepped into by accident. Then, as if things just _had_ to go completely off the rails, Matt walked in. 

“Did someone just say ‘karaoke’?” 

“Yes, yes!” Suguri said with excitement. “Wolfstadt-san says there’s a karaoke place near where he lives.” 

Matt grinned like a fiend. “Sweet. Let’s hit it Saturday night. What’d ya say, Wolfstadt? Me and Thor against you and Strawberry Shortcake? Loser has to—“ 

“I’m not making any bets with you, you sick fuck!” Klaus shot back. 

“Oh? Afraid you’ll lose again?” Matt smirked. 

Now _everyone_ was staring at Klaus. “No. I can sing just fine.” Shit! He couldn’t sing to save his life! Then Taki spoke up. 

“Klaus.” Taki’s voice was so soft Klaus barely heard him. “I’ve got your back.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. I have a feeling that things are about to veer into silliness.


	9. Chapter 9

 

It was a Thursday in late May and the Washington Nationals were in town for a four-game set at Citi Field. Taki had arrived at one-thirty and by two he had joined the other pitchers on the field to stretch and throw. Then the position players came out and batting practice got underway. Even though Taki was pitching that night, he still ran out into center field to shag flies. Some teams had banned this practice after several pitchers injured themselves diving for balls, but the Mets left it up to the pitchers themselves to decide if they wanted to participate. With so many Mets pitchers constantly on the DL, it was a wonder the organization didn’t change their policy. All the Mets pitchers were in the outfield that day except Matt Harvey, who was slated to pitch the Friday night game. Matt never shagged fly balls. 

When Klaus stepped up to the plate, Taki felt his pulse quicken and, for some inexplicable reason, he thought about that day in the Imperial Gardens and that golden-haired, golden-eyed boy. Klaus was tall and had strong arms and big hands, just like that boy, and Taki wondered what it would feel like to be lifted up high like that again, to feel those arms and hands around his body now. Would he still feel the same freedom and joy he had felt as a child who had known none of it before? Would it fill that empty space inside him? There were so many voids, voids left by his mother, whom he had loved but could remember less and less, voids left by a father who had never touched him, voids left by his sister Yura and his three half-sisters who kissed him and adored him. He was in a strange new place because he wanted to be here and he was grateful that Suguri-san had been willing to make it possible. But more and more he wondered if he had desired the things a fool desires, if he was chasing something that would remain out of reach forever. 

*** 

Claudia was at the game with a girlfriend from work to see Klaus play. Her husband wasn’t exactly a sports fan and Klaus had barely spoken ten words to the guy through the years so he wasn’t surprised that his brother-in-law didn’t come. It didn’t matter, because his sister and her friend Gillian were both baseball nuts and they had both taken a day off from the office to cheer him on, even though they were both wearing Mets jerseys with Jacob deGrom’s name and number on the backs. Klaus chatted briefly with them as they stood in the stands by the first base line during batting practice and Klaus finally had a chance to thank Claudia for sending the rest of his clothes to his apartment. His call-up from Triple-A had been so sudden, he’d had to ship all his things to her house for storage until he could find an apartment in New York. The boxes had arrived earlier in the week when he’d finally returned from his road trip. 

“Thank god, sis,” Klaus gave her a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “I was thinking I’d just start going commando.” 

Claudia clamped her hand over his mouth and chided, “Gillian doesn’t need to know what your underwear situation is, baby brother.” 

“Maybe I _do_ need to know,” Gillian protested. “So what do you guys wear under there?” She looked squarely at his crotch. 

Klaus was sporting the dry-fit practice jersey and shorts supplied by the team. “Right now? Nothing. Just hanging free,” he lied with a not-so-innocent grin at Gillian, who seemed to be game for anything. “Later on, jockstrap, cup, teeny tiny tighty whities.” Some crazed shouting and clapping arose around them suddenly and they turned to see a small body rolling around in the outfield grass. “Speaking of teeny tiny…” 

“Isn’t that him?” asked Claudia. “The guy you’re catching?” 

“Yep.” 

They watched Taki get up and take the ball out of his mitt and lob it back into the infield. Michael Conforto was at the plate shaking his head and swearing. 

“He really is tiny,” Gillian commented. “Is that the mighty Thor next to him?” 

“Yeah,” Klaus grumbled. “That big dumb Viking’s been sticking to him like a fucking bandage.” Ever since that plane ride, Klaus had started noticing that Noah positioned himself right next to Taki every chance he got: at meal times, at meetings in the clubhouse, on bus rides to and from the airports and stadiums, on the bench in the dugout. He wanted so badly to rip that blond Band-Aid right off of Taki.

Claudia was looking at him with a knowing smirk. “What?” asked Klaus. 

“Jealous are we?” she teased. 

“Ooh, dog fight!” Gillian didn’t miss a beat. “German Shepherd vs. Swedish Elkhound! Dominant Alpha Male Smackdown! Woof!” 

Klaus backed away slowly. “Okay.” Those two scared the shit out of him and he wasn’t even embarrassed to admit it to himself. “I’ll see you ladies after the game.”

Klaus was taking them both to dinner at the Szechuan restaurant by his apartment. He was looking forward to catching up with his sister and getting bombed. He also wanted to get a leg up on his teammates because he would be back at the restaurant on Saturday night following the afternoon game for a dreaded karaoke contest that Suguri was going to ‘judge’ somehow. Why did Matt have to turn everything into some twisted competition? And how could he have been stupid enough to walk into that trap? 

*** 

Of all games, Taki picked this one to lose command. Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon and Daniel Murphy _owned_ the Mets, so getting beat, and beaten badly, by the Nationals wasn’t exactly news. But they had gone over the scouting reports several times and worked out a strategy. Taki didn’t have an overpowering fastball, not like Thor, so the plan was to have Taki work the corners and vary the speed on the pitches as much as possible. Almost from the beginning, though, Taki was having difficulty locating his pitches, and balls were hanging instead of breaking and landing right _in_ the strike zone instead of out, and the Washington hitters weren’t missing. It didn’t help that Stephen Strasburg was on the mound for the Nats and had yet to allow a Mets runner on base. 

After a grueling first round through the line-up, Klaus trotted out to the mound to settle Taki down. Klaus was still feeling annoyed from batting practice, though, and before Warthen and Watanabe could join them, he gave Taki a piece of his mind. “Maybe you shouldn’t shag flies on the days that you pitch, Taki. All that showboating is only gonna eat up your energy. Save it for the game.” Taki looked stricken and Klaus immediately realized his mistake. “Shit.” He noticed that the other infielders were hanging back at their positions and he was tempted to look up to see if there was a black thundercloud hanging over his head. 

“Okay, boys, what’s the problem?” Warthen waddled up and rubbed his hands together as if the air had chilled around them. Then he put a hand on Taki’s shoulder and squeezed so hard Taki winced. “You look like you just wet your pants.” 

Watanabe didn’t even attempt to translate that for Taki. Instead, he said calmly in Japanese, “There’s nothing to worry about, Taki-sama. Nothing at all.” 

Klaus knew enough Japanese to understand exactly what Watanabe had said and he wondered if Watanabe was truly ignorant of the fact that Taki was fluent in English. He figured he shouldn’t blow Taki’s cover; he’d said enough to wreck the kid’s confidence already, so he turned to Watanabe and said into his glove, “Tell Taki I want him to bounce one in the dirt. Harper’s a free swinger. He’ll chase. I’ll block the pitch.” Klaus punched his chest protector with his fist. “Nothing’ll get past me. Trust me.” He looked Taki in the eyes and shot him a smile. “Let’s do this, kid. You and me.” Then he nodded and knocked his facemask down into place and jogged back to home plate before Warthen could start asking about happy places and breakfast sandwiches. 

On the next pitch, Klaus laid down the sign for a slider in the dirt. The ball came in like a fastball on the outside of the plate but then tailed in and sank at the last second. Harper swung and missed as Klaus shifted to his right and blocked the ball with his chest as it came up. It hurt like hell, but they were one strike away from getting out of an ugly inning. Harper stepped out of the batter’s box and took off his helmet, ran his hand through his luxuriant ‘show hair’ and adjusted his gloves. 

“I dare you to call that again,” Bryce said to Klaus. “That kid’s gonna hang that slider and I’m gonna take him deep.” 

Daniel Murphy was standing on second and most likely relaying signs to Harper. For a moment, Klaus thought of going back to the mound to tell Taki what he wanted, but rhythm was everything to a pitcher and Klaus didn’t want to disrupt what little groove Taki had gotten into with the last pitch. So he called for another ball in the dirt but he didn’t sign for pitch or location. Taki shook him off, confused. Klaus punched his chest and then slapped the dirt with his glove. “Trust me, Taki,” Klaus thought. “Just bounce one in the dirt and I’ll block it.” 

This time, Taki nodded and set. It came in straight and belt high and Harper was ready. He swung, pulling his hands in to adjust for the ball cutting in but it swerved away instead, hitting just in front of the plate. Klaus was barely able to scramble to his left and corral it against his left thigh. It hurt even more than the pitch before, and he knew he’d be black and blue there, but the payout was sweeter. It was the third out and the Nationals were only ahead 2-0 with four and a half more innings to play. They could still win this one if Taki could hold on. They walked back to the dugout but didn’t speak, didn’t even look at each other. Taki sat by himself while the other players avoided him—everyone knew to leave a pitcher alone during a game, whether it was going well or badly—while Klaus took off his gear. He would be batting second during their half of the fourth inning. Taki had trusted him, Klaus thought as he went to take his bat out of the slot. He wouldn’t let him down. 

*** 

Hours later, Klaus was enjoying a Mai Tai adorned with a miniature paper umbrella as Claudia and Gillian took turns ordering dinner at Double Joy Luck Szechuan Palace, the restaurant across the street from his crummy studio apartment. He had wanted to order a drink suitable for a man, but both women had insisted that he order one of the house cocktails and he had caved in because he was too sore and tired to put up a fight. Plus, he was in a great mood and even a girlie drink couldn’t ruin it. The Mets had won and he liked to think that it was all due to his two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth which had tied the game and eventually led to Strasburg being pulled in the seventh, when the Mets went ahead with two more runs off the Nationals’ bullpen. Taki had pitched into the eighth, his curveball roaring back with a vengeance, red in tooth and claw* and dropping like clockwork from twelve to six into Klaus’s waiting glove. It had been glorious and Taki had looked so happy in the clubhouse afterwards. 

“And you sir?” The pretty waitress waited with her pen poised over her pad. 

Klaus quickly flipped through the pages of the menu. Shit. There was a Chinese section, a Japanese section, a Thai section, an Indian section, and a ‘Hawaiian’ section. The restaurant itself was decorated like a crazy Tiki bar straight out of the late 1950s or early 1960s, complete with Easter Island heads, palm fronds, and old timey Christmas tree lights in blue, green, red, and yellow. It looked like a large-scale version of his grandfather’s basement. 

“Uh, I’ll have the steak teriyaki,” Klaus said, ordering the first thing that his eyes fell upon. “And another one of these,” he said sheepishly, pointing to his emptied glass. 

“Ah, yes,” the waitress giggled. “Was that a Mai Tai?” 

Claudia and Gillian both chimed, “Yes! Bring him another Mai Tai!” 

“Are you two gonna make fun of me all night?” Klaus asked when the waitress left. 

“Steak teriyaki?” Claudia laughed. “Has that new pitcher given you a taste for Japanese cuisine?” 

Klaus was going to deny such a false allegation except…he was an honest man and he couldn’t truthfully say that working with Taki hadn’t made him think more and more of his stay in Japan when he was a teenager. They had lived in Tokyo, where his father was on a one-year assignment to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the government. He had gone to the school all the other English-speaking children of ambassadors and diplomats and ex-patriots attended and learned to speak enough Japanese to get by at the convenience stores and ramen shops. His father had taken him and his sister to Kyoto once to see the emperor and his retinue during some kind of holiday in the spring. They had stayed at an onsen and he had seen real geishas with his own eyes. They had looked like living dolls with their white faces and red lips and colorful kimonos. They were beautiful, but none had been as beautiful as a boy he had seen in the Imperial Gardens that day. That boy had worn robes the same color as the flowers in bloom at the time, and a headdress with feathered fans at his ears. That boy had reached out to him and uttered words he didn’t understand, but when Klaus had picked him up and plucked a cluster of fragrant lilac blooms for him, the boy had touched his cheek and spoken in a voice so soft and sweet,  it didn’t matter what the words meant. Klaus had thought at the time, “I’m yours,” and for some strange reason, it felt more real now than ever before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Sorry, I couldn't resist quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson.


	10. Chapter 10

 

The laser printed poster taped to the window of the Double Joy Luck Szechuan Palace advertised this Saturday night as ‘Retro Nite.’ Everyone, except Suguri, assumed it meant that the song selection would be limited to music from the early 2000s, maybe even as far back as the late 1990s. Wrong! While Matt, Noah, Klaus, and Taki looked over the twenty-page food menu in blissful ignorance, Suguri was happily perusing the ‘Song Bible’—a greasy black binder stuffed full of paper in plastic sheet protectors listing all the music on tap for the night—and filling out index cards to give to the DJ in charge of the sound system. ‘Retro Nite’ apparently meant music from the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s, and that was right in Suguri’s wheelhouse. He ordered a Blue Hawaiian cocktail and chuckled, low and evil.

“Jesus Christ,” Klaus muttered. “What the hell is he up to?” Klaus had been nervous all day. Steven Matz had blown the day game again and Klaus hadn’t even played, so he couldn’t be blamed for the fact that the Mets had scored only two runs against the Nationals’ seven. His jitters hadn't been about the game, though. He was petrified about what was coming _after_ the game: the walk up to the stage after his number was called, the _singing_ , God help him. “I’ll have another one of these!” Klaus called out to the waitress. If he could hide under that little paper umbrella when the time came, he would.

Noah and Matt were sitting there all calm and collected, as if they were former opera singers, so Klaus asked, “Hey, have you guys done this before?”

Matt just smirked and then raised his middle finger. Noah looked up from the menu and declared, “I’m pitch perfect.”

“Shit. How about you, Taki?” asked Klaus, hoping the desperation wasn’t leaking out into his voice.

Taki whispered something to Suguri and Suguri shrugged. “I’m not new to it,” Taki admitted modestly. The truth was, Suguri had been bringing Taki along with him to karaoke clubs for years in Tokyo, where it was not uncommon for entire families to get into the mix. “Don’t worry, Klaus. Suguri-san will show you how it’s done.”

Christ, did he ever. Halfway through their meal, the DJ started calling out numbers and people began making their way to the ‘stage,’ a raised platform at the center of the dining room with a disco ball hung overhead and strobe lights aimed at the ‘singer.’ Most sang really poorly and Klaus breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the DJ called out, “Number eight!”

Suguri put down his fork, wiped his mouth with his napkin, walked confidently to the stage and took the mic in his hand as if he was born with it. The first few percussive notes thumped through the room from the speakers and then Suguri’s gravelly voice filled their ears. It took a while for the words to register with Klaus, but there was no mistaking Suguri’s magical command.

 

_How can you just leave me standing_

_Alone in a world that’s so cold_

_Maybe I’m just too demanding_

_Maybe I’m just like my father too bold_ …

 

Shit! Prince had died two years ago. Was this some kind of tribute? And how was Suguri able to half-croon, half-growl  _When Doves Cry_ like some military Frank Sinatra? Who does that? Klaus thought. Is there anything this man _can’t_ do? There was wild clapping as Suguri stepped off the stage. He was frighteningly good and people were actually high-fiving him as he walked by their tables.

Then Klaus’s number was called and he trudged to the stage like he was going to the gallows. The DJ handed him the index card and Klaus read it, and reread it, going pale as a ghost because Supreme Judge Suguri had slated him to sing _I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore_ by REO Speedwagon. Who or what the fuck was REO Speedwagon?

“Somebody kill me,” Klaus prayed to whatever god was actually listening. He was way too sober for this. He looked across the room at the four men sitting around his table. Taki appeared to be on the verge of tears with pity. The rest of those bastards were eagerly awaiting his downfall. Jesus Christ! What had he gotten himself into? Klaus readily accepted the headset that the DJ offered him. He didn’t know the band or the song and the least he could do was sing along to the original music and lyrics piped into his ears.

The number started up and he concentrated on the video monitor in front of him. C’mon, Wolfstadt! Klaus told himself. Dad used to listen to this shit. Sing, goddamn it! Sing like you mean it! A million years and a bucket of sweat later, the song ended mercifully and he took off the headset and stumbled back to his table in near silence. He noticed that the other diners were hunched over their plates and that there had been no clapping. Fucking hell.

Matt was up next. He gave Klaus a smug smile and sauntered to the stage, glanced at the index card handed to him from the DJ and refused the headset. He struck a pose under the lights just as the first piano chord echoed out.

 

_Just a small town girl_

_Livin’ in a lonely world_

_She took the midnight train goin’_

_Anywhere_ …

 

Oh, for crying out loud! Was there anyone on the planet who hadn’t seen the last episode of _The Sopranos_? This wasn’t fair! Matt was hamming it up big time, stalking around the stage, pointing to all the pretty girls, and the crowd was swallowing it hook, line, and sinker, especially the women, who were ooh-ing and aah-ing and swaying along with him. Damn that Dark Knight! Had he bribed Suguri or something? Why else would Suguri have given him a song anyone and their grandmother could sing? Shit, even _I_ could sing this, thought Klaus, but everyone had their eyes focused on Matt and all his theatrics. Even Suguri was looking on with approval. Klaus had to admit that Matt sounded pretty convincing up there. 

Then it was Noah’s turn. As soon as the bass notes started, Klaus clenched his fists under the table. That Nordic computer nerd must have slipped Suguri a Benjamin, too. Except, Thor had lied about being pitch perfect. Well, he might be pitch perfect on the mound, but on the karaoke stage he was monumentally tone deaf.

 

_Oh can’t you seeee?_

_You belong to meeee_

_My poor heart aaaaches_

_With every step you taaaake_...

 

Suguri was bleeding out of his ears, Matt was ignoring Thor completely while he tore into the remaining fried chicken wings, and Taki was sipping his alcohol-free strawberry daiquiri like he’d never tasted anything so interesting. Klaus watched, mesmerized, as Noah ‘sang’ with the musical abilities of a statue. He was as animated as one, too, belting out Sting’s heartrending stalker lyrics in a monotone without moving a muscle in his body except his left arm, which he raised and lowered periodically in a bizarre salute. Klaus had gone to Disney World as a child, and he could swear that Thor wouldn’t be out of place in the Hall of Presidents if he cut his hair, grew a dark beard, and wore old timey clothes. It was so bad it was almost transcendental. This was good, very good, because Suguri had planned some kind of Duet from Hell for round two and Thor’s off-key Zen automaton performance meant that Klaus could still redeem himself. 

When Taki stepped up to the mic twenty minutes later, though, Klaus’s brain melted inside his skull. He didn’t even know the song, but the words coming out of Taki’s mouth messed him up so badly he wanted to hide under the table.

 

_I wanna know what love is_

_I want you to show me_

_I wanna feel what love is_

_I know you can show me_ …

 

Oh man, was that a sign? Were Taki’s Shinto gods throwing Klaus a fastball down the middle for him to knock it out of the park? Taki’s voice was clear and pure and he sparkled like a jewel under the lights and Klaus realized it really was a sign because in that moment he was reminded again of that boy he had lifted up under those flowering vines. That boy had spoken words he hadn’t quite understood and, yet, it felt as though those words had traveled forward on a thread reaching all the way to right _now_. It was all up to him to make a move. He didn’t even know what he wanted, just that he wanted _something_ and he wanted it from Taki. He looked at the three other men sitting with him at the table as Taki sang with passionate longing on stage. Suguri, Noah, Matt. All cockblockers! Klaus thought, but none of them were going to stop him from hitting his home run. He called the waitress over and ordered another round of drinks. It was time to get bombed. It was time to get serious. 

*** 

Suguri had saved his most wicked intentions for the duets, but he wasn’t without compassion. “Wolfstadt-san, you suck. Completely. You sing with Taki-sama next. Harvey-san, you don’t suck. You take Roboto-chan. Roboto-chan: don’t quit your day job. And don’t bother moving your arm. It won’t help you here.” 

By now, everyone except Taki was fairly trashed, which meant confidence was running high. Taki could sing like a bird and didn’t even need the alcohol to fuel his bravery, but he wasn’t quite sure he could fully compensate for Klaus’s lack of karaoke chops. He could only hope that Suguri-san had opted to give Matt and Noah the more difficult song to sing. When Matt looked at the index card, though, he smiled widely and passed the card to Noah, who glanced at it and shrugged. The two of them faced each other on the stage and took turns singing the stanzas, Matt channeling Dean Martin at his booziest and Noah flailing _both_ of his arms against Suguri’s advice. Their actions distracted from the sappy lyrics: 

 

_Baby when I met you there was peace unknown_

_I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb_

_I was soft inside_

_There was something going on_ …

 

When they got to—

 

_We ride it together, ah ah_

_Making love with each other, ah ah_...

 

—the crowd started singing along with them. Klaus couldn’t believe it. He looked down and saw that Taki’s face was three shades of red but he didn’t know if it was because he was embarrassed by the lyrics or by the fact that Matt and Noah were obviously winning this nutty contest. Klaus chugged down his sixth Mai Tai and noticed that Suguri was already done with his seventh cocktail and showing no signs of inebriation. 

The moment of truth arrived all too soon. Taki read the index card first and then passed it to Klaus with a shy smile. _Wind Beneath My Wings_. Another mystery song, thought Klaus, better wear the headset. But Taki leaned over and said quietly, “Please don’t wear that. I’ll go first. Just follow my lead.” 

Taki sang the first half of the song, his blue-black eyes trained right on Klaus’s golden ones, but only a few lines in, Klaus could feel tears blurring his vision, and by the time Taki reached the chorus, he was bawling like a baby. Taki sang on, his voice steady and sure and cutting Klaus’s heart to pieces:

 

_Did you ever know that you’re my hero_

_And everything I would like to be?_

_I can fly higher than an eagle_

_For you are the wind beneath my wings_ …

 

Klaus could barely make out the words scrolling up the monitor when it was his turn to sing, he was so overcome with emotion, as if someone had flipped the Full On Girlie Mode switch that he didn’t even know existed inside him. Then, just as he was about to concede defeat and leave the stage with his tail between his legs, Suguri was suddenly standing next to him with a mic and urging him on. With Suguri’s rich tenor buoying his own ragged voice, Klaus made it through the finish line, wrecked and grateful. He didn’t even hear the clapping, he was such a wet hot mess, and he hadn’t even had the benefit of sex.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't have written this chapter without YouTube. The songs are, in order of mention:
> 
> Suguri: When Doves Cry by Prince  
> Klaus: I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore by REO Speedwagon  
> Matt: Don't Stop Believing by Journey  
> Noah: Every Breath You Take by The Police  
> Taki: I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner  
> Matt/Noah: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton  
> Taki/Klaus: Wind Beneath my Wings by Bette Midler


	11. Chapter 11

 

Klaus ended up at Taki’s condo in Chelsea. 

Matt and Noah had gone their separate ways after their phenomenal karaoke duet to hit a few other bars in town. Suguri was still busy accepting accolades from the waitresses so Taki sat and discreetly observed Klaus with growing trepidation. Klaus was clearly plastered and unsteady as he stumbled to the men’s room, ostensibly to empty his bladder and maybe splash some water on his face. 

“Gotta take a pishhh…en…pudda…wadda…uhn…meh faaaysh,” Klaus had mumbled before he headed for the restrooms at the back. 

Taki was so very worried that his catcher would end up face down and comatose in the gutter if they turned their backs on him now. He nervously watched Suguri slip three crisp one hundred dollar bills into his wallet—one hundred each from Matt and Noah for song selection rights, one hundred from Klaus for being the biggest loser for the night and likely any other night—and broached the subject.

“What if he passes out and chokes on his own vomit?” Taki pleaded into Suguri’s disapproving scowl. “We can’t let him die like that!” 

“ _We_?” 

“ _I_ can’t let him die like that!” 

“Why not?” Suguri grumbled. “The world won’t miss his singing…if you can call it such a thing.” He had his own plans mapped out for the night, and they sure didn’t involve chaperoning someone who couldn’t carry a tune. Taki looked so earnest, though, and Suguri didn’t have the heart to refuse him what he wanted, even if it meant assisting that melodically challenged dolt. 

So they led Klaus out of the restaurant and across the street, which took a lot longer than expected since Klaus seemed intent on zigzagging rather than just making a beeline for their destination. The five-story red brick building didn’t have a doorman; residents had to use a keycard to gain entry. More minutes passed as Klaus fumbled through his pockets. Suguri kept glancing impatiently at his watch, grunts of displeasure eminating from his throat. Once inside, well, things got worse. 

“Baka!” Suguri swore at Klaus when he discovered that the building didn’t have an elevator either. “Are you sure you live on the top floor? Wake up, you moron!” He slapped Klaus hard across the face, hoping to sober him up enough to walk him up the stairwell. Why did that crying fool have to guzzle three more cocktails after his horrendous performance? Was it to wash away the humiliation? Suguri muttered to Taki in Japanese, “No doorman. No elevator. _And_ he can’t even hold his liquor. Pathetic!” 

Between the two of them, they managed to coerce Klaus up three steps before he slumped to the ground. They quickly realized that they wouldn’t be able to lift two hundred twenty-five pounds of dead weight up five flights of stairs. Suguri was ready to leave Klaus right there, but Taki begged, “Please, Suguri-san, let’s just call a cab and let him sleep on the couch at our place. At least we have an elevator.” 

Suguri stared down at the crumpled form at his feet and relented. How dangerous could he be in this condition? The night was still young and Suguri wanted to hook up with a very attractive woman from the Japanese media that he had met at the stadium earlier in the day. She had texted him—a booty call, more or less—while they were eating dinner and Suguri had suggested drinks at a bar near the condo in Chelsea at eleven-thirty. She had been very amenable…so…time was of the essence. 

They hauled Klaus back outside in a hurry, took a taxi to their Manhattan condo and, after a quick elevator ride up to their floor, they laid Klaus out on the sectional sofa in the living room. 

“What kind of man cries like that?” Suguri was still irked as he walked to the hallway linen closet and took out a blanket. “That song was supposed to be a fucking joke.” 

Taki was silent as he removed Klaus’s shoes and placed a pillow under his head. He knew Suguri didn’t think much of Klaus, which made things so much worse because Taki wanted very badly to kiss Klaus right on his slack mouth and he couldn’t let Suguri see him commit such an appalling act, especially with someone he didn’t respect. Klaus was already snoring softly and he looked so vulnerable stretched out like that. He took the blanket from Suguri and said, “I’ll keep an eye on him. Don’t worry about me.” 

Suguri nodded, his expression stern, and stated, “Alright, Taki-sama. You don’t need to wait up for me.” 

That was code for “I’ll be sleeping elsewhere tonight” and Taki’s heart skipped a beat in excitement. He dared not raise his face to Suguri because he was now wearing a shit-eating grin that wasn’t going anywhere. “Yes, Suguri-san. Please text me if you change your mind.” 

From the corner of his eye, Taki could see that Suguri was checking himself in the mirror hanging in the foyer, smoothing his thick dark hair and straightening his shirt. The man was still pretty hot for his age, Taki thought, and he was glad that Suguri managed to find companionship everywhere he went. Back in Tokyo, Taki had often accompanied Suguri on various dinner dates with his “lady friends” for the sake of appearances. Suguri and his wife had been unable to conceive despite every effort and Taki knew that it had been a point of contention between the two of them during the early part of their marriage. They had drifted apart, as couples often do who have no children to bind them together, but they had remained friends even if they no longer shared a bed. She was still his spouse and Suguri wouldn’t flaunt his affairs unnecessarily, wouldn’t embarrass her in public like that, so he always brought Taki along on those dates to make it seem more respectable. 

It wasn’t until Taki was older, fourteen or fifteen, that he realized he was serving as Suguri’s beard of sorts. Not that he minded. On the contrary, Taki enjoyed being the third wheel on those dates with what was invariably a very attractive woman. Suguri always had pretty women giving him the eye and Taki was in awe of the man’s skills. It didn’t matter where they were—a posh French restaurant, a Euro-style bar, a karaoke club full of drunken salarymen and yakuza bosses*—Suguri always seemed to know what to say or do to make a woman adore him. He was so much more accomplished than his own father in the romance department, Taki had always thought, although he had been told that his mother had defied her own parents to marry his father, who had apparently wooed and wowed her like a pro. Taki could never figure that one out. 

All those years of watching and learning the ropes had come to naught, though, when Taki made those absurd vows at sixteen to forgo meat, alcohol, and premarital sex. At the time, those vows seemed perfectly doable: he could still eat fish and other seafood, he didn’t really like the taste of beer, and no girls to his knowledge were even remotely interested in him. When he told Suguri about his vows, Suguri had been okay with the abstention from meat, skeptical about the abstention from alcohol, and downright mortified about the abstention from sex. 

“Taki-sama! Have you lost your mind? Everything I’ve taught you will go to waste!” 

Indeed. It had been a mistake, but for the last four years it had proven to be a worthwhile one. The gods had smiled on him, given him the one thing that had prompted those vows: success in baseball. He would wait to marry a nice girl, one that looked like Yuna, hopefully. Both his father and his uncle had told him before he left for the States that arrangements would be made in a year’s time. Suitable candidates from good families would be presented to him. Taki would marry at twenty-one. It had seemed like a sensible thing, even with the frustration of aching, congested nuts and being best friends with his right hand in the shower. That was just a temporary inconvenience. 

Except… 

“Have a good time, Suguri-san. Enjoy yourself.” 

Suguri slipped on his jacket and squared his shoulders. “I have a feeling I’m going to get lucky tonight,” he said with a wink. 

As soon as the door closed behind Suguri, Taki took up his position next to Klaus’s prone body. He had been careful to keep his eyes trained elsewhere as much as possible when they were in the clubhouse or in the dugout or on the baseball diamond and _especially_ in the showers where Taki had made certain _not_ to look at Klaus in all his naked glory. But now he let his eyes roam freely over every inch of him: his sleeping face with its square jaw and masculine brow, his wide shoulders. Taki pulled the blanket back slowly, afraid to wake him, and gazed at Klaus’s chest rising and falling with each breath, then his slender waist and hips…those strong thighs…he could only imagine how firm they must be under his trousers. He furtively glanced at Klaus’s crotch, his own face growing hot with shame and…undeniable lust. He wanted so badly to reach out and touch him there. Could he dare risk such a thing? What if Klaus woke up and caught him perving all over him like that? Surely they would both drop dead on the spot! Instead, he bent close and breathed in Klaus’s scent: sweat, the sweetness of alcohol on his breath, soap or cologne of some kind or maybe…laundry detergent? Hard to tell. Taki lingered when he reached Klaus’s groin. He dipped his face lower until he was almost pressing his lips against the gentle rise at the zipper. Fuck! 

With a jerk of his head, Taki pulled back and covered his face with his hands. He was dying of shame, just _dying_! This was so fucked up. He had been watching Klaus all night like some stalker lurking in the shadows, it had all been so shameful, but he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t his fault completely, was it? When he came over to the States to play for the Mets, he hadn’t expected to see a pair of golden eyes; golden eyes identical to the ones on the face of that young man who had held him in his arms that day and made him feel things that he didn’t understand, made him say those words: “Will you be mine?” What in the world had made him say those words? And, yet, he wanted to say them now, to _him_. To Klaus.

He got up and walked into his bedroom. On his dresser he had set up a small shrine to his parents and a separate shrine to his gods. He said his prayers to his mother and father, and then he hurried back out to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Suguri kept it well stocked with alcohol: beer, sake, vodka, plum wine. Taki grabbed a bottle of sake and poured himself a generous glassful, then went back to his bedroom and offered the glass to his gods. After saying another prayer, he downed the glass in one gulp. It was permissible to drink to the gods; it was for _their_ pleasure, not for one’s own. Right. Taki remained in place for some long minutes, until the alcohol started working its magic, unraveling his inhibitions, setting him free to go to the one he longed for. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Props to an anonymous reader who so kindly and astutely reminded me of the whole yakuza-karaoke connection.
> 
> Next chapter: sexy times! I think? I hope?


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who have only read the source manga—Hyakujitsu No Bara—it may seem beyond the realm of possibility for Taki to make an overt move on Klaus. But in Inariya’s doujinshis—Lukenwalde No Heya De, Halloween Special, Nikukyuu Techou—Taki isn’t the repressed, troubled, conflicted character we see in Maiden Rose. He’s still naïve and rather clueless, but he’s also far more open and engaged in their relationship and, in some rare instances, he’s horny as all heck for Klaus. 
> 
> The intimacy between Taki and Klaus in this chapter is inspired by the mangaka’s aforementioned doujinshis, specifically Halloween Special II, where Taki, in the guise of the most adorable little vampire ever, is far more proactive in his advances towards Klaus than in the main manga, even if the smuttiest action actually occurs in Klaus’s dreams. That guy.

 

Man, oh man. He was going to be punished in this life, if not the afterlife, but Taki didn’t even care because he was burning up _now_ —his face, his hands, his _groin_. Even his hair was on fire! The rigidity of his cock in his pants made it painful to stand, much less walk back into the living room. Pain or no pain, a typhoon with gale force winds wouldn’t be able to stop him from doing the unthinkable. Klaus was pulling him inexorably towards him, into his arms, into his fucking lap, where Taki wanted to grind and writhe against him. He had done it before, on his bed, face down and kissing into his pillow, humping into another pillow like a cat in heat while he fantasized about golden eyes and strong arms and a hot hard cock rubbing against his own, then parting his cheeks, breaching his hole, sliding home. He wanted it so bad, wanted this burning to consume him completely.

Taki realized he was whimpering, making high-pitched kitten noises, and he hurriedly clamped a hand over his mouth. He was staring at Klaus from the doorway of his bedroom, trying to work up his nerve. The initial surge of wild confidence was ebbing with each second of hesitation. Another glass, he told himself. Another glass of sake, that’ll do the trick; nothing like a spot of liquid courage to grease the wheels of desire. Yeah. He tiptoed back into the kitchen, filled his glass and drank it down like water. He was trembling with anxiety—not even his major league debut had scared him this much—but after a while, the tremors faded and he felt strangely bold, fearless, like he could stand before Klaus and bare his body and soul to him, declare, “Fuck me! I’m yours!”

The room was literally pulsing or maybe it was just his heartbeat pounding in his ears like a taiko drum. He took slow steps towards the sectional, his eyes never leaving Klaus’s slumbering form. For a brief moment, he worried that his gods would withdraw their favor if he did this thing that he wanted to do. Then he pushed that thought aside. He would never have this chance again perhaps. He had to take it while it was within his grasp. If he leapt off the cliff and there was no safety net below, well, too fucking bad for him, right? If he sinned and his gods saw, well, too fucking bad for them.

Taki knelt on the floor beside Klaus and drew the blanket away completely. There was a light sheen of sweat on Klaus’s forehead and cheeks, above his upper lip, on his neck and pooling in the shallow depression at the center of his collarbone. With stealthy fingers, Taki unbuttoned the first button on Klaus’s shirt, grateful that he wasn’t wearing a pullover. When Klaus didn’t even stir, Taki proceeded to the next button, then the next, until he was able to peel away the cotton blend fabric and fully expose Klaus’s chest. It was like opening the most beautiful gift. Klaus was magnificent. But Taki already knew that he was. He may have averted his eyes in the showers, but in the locker room it was impossible to avoid catching a glimpse of his ripped torso or the firm globes of his ass filling those tight undies that Klaus favored. Catchers always had great ass and thigh muscles from all the squatting that they had to do. (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) Right now, Taki was drooling over those well-developed pectorals…and those abs…talk about a six-pack…he had a fucking _case_!

A bead of saliva dripped onto Klaus’s sternum from Taki’s mouth. It caught him by surprise. _I’m perving it up big time_ , Taki thought. _This is what I get for holding it all in. I’ve turned into the world’s horniest vampire. Yesss!_ Being young and sexually frustrated had driven Taki to conduct some serious ‘research’ as any studious boy would. He had combed his father’s library and found tucked in a cabinet the large bound volume of shunga prints by Utamaro, ‘erotic’ art that had made the Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking technique famous the world over. They were only reproductions of the original woodblock prints, but it didn’t matter. What mattered were the images of gigantic, veined cocks plunging into various orifices dripping with gallons of fluid, of a man servicing six women at once, of toes curled and backs arched in the throes of ecstasy. At first it had frightened him; later, he wondered if any of that was truly possible: all those contorted positions, all that cum gushing and spurting all over the place, all that plunging…in and out…in and out.

Well, Taki wasn’t going to wait any longer. He was going to find out for himself if those images were a lie, if all the porn he had seen on the internet and in the mangas he had secretly perused at the bookstores were based in reality. So he bent his head and drew his tongue along Klaus’s breastbone, licked up his own spit, then darted his tongue at Klaus’s collarbone and tasted his sweat. It was salty. He pulled back and gazed for a moment at Klaus’s face. His catcher was still out cold and it made Taki smile and feel brave and…very naughty. Taki bit his bottom lip when he noticed that Klaus’s nipples were erect. He touched his own nipples and found that they were as hard as pebbles, too. He smiled again; this was so fucking amazing. He couldn’t believe he was doing these pervy things to Klaus and getting away with it! Emboldened, Taki drew close again and traced the tip of his tongue around the hard nub of Klaus’s right nipple. He closed his lips over it and suckled gently, then firmly, swirling his tongue, tasting. Yum.

A low rumble of a groan from Klaus stopped Taki in his tracks. He pulled away immediately, his heart crashing about in his chest like a cornered beast trying to escape the confines of his ribcage. Oh shit! Had he gone too far? Was Klaus going to wake up and clobber him? Taki clamped his hand over his mouth again, he was breathing so fast, in a panic, but Klaus only let out a soft huff of air and shifted his legs in his sleep, his head falling away to the left. What luck! There would be no clobbering, not yet, at least. No…pounding...not yet, at least. Taki giggled at the thought. Matt had been calling him Strawberry Shortcake and right now he figured he should stop hating the Dark Knight for giving him that insulting nickname because, well, he _did_ feel like Strawberry Shortcake: invincibly cute. The alcohol was doing wonders for his self-esteem, wasn’t it? Warping it, if anything.

Enough with the nipples, though. Taki’s erection had only gotten harder and more painful and his mouth was watering more than ever because he was thinking about what Klaus was packing _down there_. Taki’s eyes followed the trail of spun gold leading from his navel to…holy shit! Was that his fevered imagination playing tricks on his mind or was that prominent bulge at Klaus’s crotch for real? It hadn’t been that, uh, evident before. Surely, it had grown larger since…the molestation had started. Taki swallowed the huge lump of lust, fear, and guilt that had lodged in his throat and reached out a hand. He let it hover over said bulge for a moment before he lowered it gently, spreading his fingers in an attempt to cover the entire…hard…length. Taki gulped again. There was so much of him and, no, it was definitely _not_ his imagination running wild. What he felt under his palm was all man, all…meat.

“Somebody kill me,” Taki mumbled. “I couldn’t possibly fit that—”

“Taki?”

_Uwaaa!_

Klaus was peering at him through narrowly cracked eyelids heavy with sleep, blinking slowly. Taki was frozen like a statue, but Klaus didn’t seem to notice. He merely stammered, “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

Taki nodded, his eyes like saucers, his hands clenched into fists at his mouth. He must have looked like a petrified squirrel caught stealing acorns from the other squirrels*.

“Yeah…” Klaus murmured in a raspy voice, “…I’m dreaming for sure…” His eyes closed again and he reached a hand down and gripped his hard-on through his pants. “So fucking painful…want you so bad, Taki…Cutie Pie…wanna come so bad…” Klaus had been having these dreams for some weeks now, dreams where he’s doing all sorts of mind-blowing things with Taki, _sexual_ things involving lots of bending and slurping and thrusting, and he’d always wake up with the sheets sticky and cold with cum. It was ridiculous: he was twenty-six years old and having wet dreams over his pitcher, but he would take it anyway he could get it, and if the only way he could be with Taki was in his dreams, then he was happy to do the nasty in La-La Land.

Taki’s ears were ringing. There was no way he had heard Klaus correctly, but Klaus was now stroking himself through his trousers and groaning in his sleep or half-sleep. Taki had known about people who were sleepwalkers. One of his grade school classmates had been one and the kid had to be tied down to his bed to prevent him from accidentally hurting himself in the middle of the night. Not that he thought Klaus was a sleepwalker, but people were certainly capable of doing things in their sleep and not even recollect the experiences later on. Klaus had been too drunk to even walk on his own and it had been less than two hours since they had left the restaurant. Suguri had said the man couldn’t hold his liquor…he was probably still bombed.

Even if Klaus wasn’t completely shitfaced, Taki sure was. He could still do this; _they_ could still do this, especially if Klaus had been speaking the truth. What was that phrase he had learned during his Latin lessons? _In vino veritas_ : In wine, truth. He hoped that Klaus was rocking that _in vino veritas_ thing because Taki was going to freaking lose it if this went on any longer. When he reached out and started unzipping Klaus’s trousers, Klaus’s hands dropped to his sides, giving Taki full access to his nether regions. With a nudge to tell Klaus to lift his hips and a firm tug, Taki lowered both pants and underwear to Klaus’s thighs and his cock sprang free.

Taki gasped. It couldn’t be helped. Klaus was big, not scary big like in those Utamaro prints, but long and thick with a perfectly shaped head. The idea of _that_ going into his body made Taki swoon practically. He pulled his shirt over his head, kicked off his pants and briefs in record time. He didn’t want to chicken out. He wanted to ride the wave of desire that was crashing into him. He climbed on top of Klaus and Klaus’s arms wrapped around him like thick bindings as Taki stretched out flat and rubbed against him, chest to groin. He felt captured and overwhelmed, his heart pounding like a hammer in his chest, his skin aflame, their sweat and scent mixing and mingling. Klaus was gripping his ass in his big hands, kneading his cheeks, spreading them so he could finger at his entrance. Then Klaus shifted their bodies slightly, pulling Taki forward, positioning his own cock so it slid against Taki’s hole and up between his cheeks. He pushed Taki away from his chest, so that Taki was propped up with his hands braced on Klaus’s shoulders and Klaus could reach between them and stroke Taki’s cock.

“Come with me, Taki,” Klaus whispered. “You’re so beautiful.” His arms were long enough, and Taki was small enough, for Klaus to reach around Taki’s ass to grip his own cock. “I’m so close. I want you to come with me. Will you do that for me?”

Taki was in tears as it was, overcome by what he was doing, what he was feeling, after all the years of locking it away, he was finally doing _this_ , feeling _this_ , all of it with _him_. Klaus really had spoken the truth. This really was all a dream, the most glorious dream ever.

“I’m yours, Klaus,” Taki whispered back. And then he was coming, shaking and sobbing in Klaus’s lap, wrecked and in pieces. Above his own cries he heard Klaus groan loudly, felt his body buck several times and stiffen beneath him, then the hot wetness against his back. Could anything feel better than this? Taki wondered. He would find out that, yes, there were things that did feel even better than what they had just done, much, much better.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Do squirrels even do that?


	13. Chapter 13

 

Klaus had been awake the entire time. And not flat-out drunk, mind you, just really buzzed. He hadn’t gone to Penn State for four years and served another four years in fucking Triple-A and NOT learned how to drink like a pro. Before going to the restaurant that night, Klaus had taken his painkillers and then he’d swallowed another dose at the end of the night when he had escaped to the bathroom to enjoy a nice long piss and clear his head. All that crying he did on stage had drained a good portion of the alcohol from his system, but he still needed protection from Suguri, every teenaged boy’s worst nightmare: the girlfriend’s Father from Hell. Feigning weakness, feigning submission, was the best way to prevent an alpha wolf from tearing out one’s throat for invading his territory. All’s fair in love and war, right? Wasn’t he merely using his wits and common sense? How else would he ever get close to Taki? He had to throw Suguri off his scent. Collapsing in the stairwell of his apartment building was a spur-of-the-moment decision but, sweet Mary Mother of God, he deserved an Oscar for that performance. The rest of it was just circumstantial luck: Taki’s frantic concern, Suguri’s hot date waiting in the wings.

This didn’t make him a liar and a scumbag, Klaus reasoned with himself. It’s not like he _planned_ the whole thing in advance. In fact, he was absolutely sincere in his feelings for Taki, even if he couldn’t understand what was driving those feelings, or where it was all leading to in the end. This crazy hook-up or fling—or was it an obsession? He didn’t know _what_ to call it—floated on the scent of a distant memory, twisted in his gut and invaded his sleep, reached into his skull from somewhere in the past. Try as he might to put his finger on it, pin it down like a butterfly in a display case, it was always just out of reach, so fucking elusive.

Klaus forced himself to think instead on the here and now, and right now he was spread out on his back on Taki’s sectional with his trousers bunched at his thighs and his dick finally going soft on his stomach. He had wanted to do so much more than what they had actually done, but he didn’t want to blow his cover either, didn’t want to show his hand too soon. At least it had given him, and Taki, some relief, temporary as it was.

He could hear Taki in the bathroom, the water running in the sink. He’s washing himself, Klaus thought. He’s like a cat that way. He’s got to be _clean_. Klaus, meanwhile…well, he was going to teach Taki the joys of getting down and dirty if he were lucky enough to get the chance; yeah, lucky enough to win the billion dollar lottery. As slim as his future chances were, Klaus had gotten this far—way further than he had ever imagined at the start of the evening—and he wasn’t about to drop the ball like some bumbling rookie.

Taki approached him with a wet towel. He was dressed in a dark blue yukata decorated with a stylized pattern of wisteria blossoms in white. He looked exquisite, even with his hair disheveled and his face still flushed from the alcohol, and the orgasm. He knelt on the carpet beside Klaus and ran the warm wet washcloth over his chest, down his abdomen, around his cock and testicles. Klaus grabbed his hand and pulled Taki up onto his chest again and, for the first time, he kissed him, just a light brush of the lips, before pulling away.

“I thought you said you didn’t drink,” Klaus teased. He kept his voice low and soft. He didn’t want to scare off his prey.

Taki made a constricted sound, blushed a deeper red and dropped his head against Klaus’s shoulder.

“Don’t hide your face,” Klaus told him gently. He pulled up his trousers, sat up, drawing Taki closer to him, and held Taki by the chin so he couldn’t turn away. “Do you know…you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He pressed his nose against the skin of Taki’s cheek and breathed in deeply. “I’ve never smelled anyone like you…you remind me of flowers…these flowers I saw when I was in Japan.” Taki froze, listening, heat moving through him in waves. He might faint, but Klaus’s voice anchored him: “You smell just like those flowers in Kyoto, the ones in the Imperial Gardens. Have you ever seen them? What are they called?”

Taki could feel the tears coming back again, up his throat and into his eyeballs. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he had to believe what he was _seeing_ even as his vision blurred: those same golden eyes. It was him; that boy, it had to be him. “They’re called wisteria.” And then he couldn’t speak another word.

“Taki?” Klaus put both hands around his reddened cheeks and gazed intently at him. He hadn’t had opportunity to look so openly before, but now he looked, really, really looked. Klaus closed his eyes and breathed him again. “It was you,” he said, not even a question, his voice full of both incredulity and certitude. “You were that boy that day. It was you.”

Everything made sudden, delirious sense, random puzzle pieces falling into place and locking together to form a picture growing clearer and clearer. Klaus put his arms around Taki and held him tight, like he was holding onto him for dear life. The clock chimed twice. It was two o’clock and reality hit like an exploding grenade.

“Holy shit!” Klaus scanned the room, seeing it for the first time. “Where the fuck am I? This is your apartment, right? Fuck! Where’s Suguri? He’s gonna fucking kill me. Jesus Christ!” He stood up and quickly zipped up his pants, practically knocking Taki back onto the floor.

“Klaus! Stop that! Calm down. Suguri knows you’re here. We brought you here because you were too drunk to walk up the stairs to your apartment,” Taki said.

As his panic receded, Klaus realized that, yeah, right, he knew where he was, he had been faking the whole boozehound act and now his ruse would appear even more convincing. That didn’t mitigate the fact that Suguri would murder him in cold blood if he discovered what he had done with Taki.

“I have to get the hell out of here, Taki. Suguri...he'll kill me.” He felt in his pockets for his wallet and keys and phone. At this hour, he’d call for an Uber pick-up.

“But he knows you’re here and he probably won’t come back until the morning," Taki explained. "He’s with a…lady friend and—”

“Yeah? And let’s say she’s not too impressed with his junk and tells him to leave? Then what? He’ll come back, see that I’m still here, and throw me out with the garbage. I think I’d rather leave on my own terms.” Klaus finished punching in his Uber request and saw the look on Taki’s face. Christ, he felt like such an asshole! “Hey, listen Taki. We’re both tired and I think we’ll both sleep better if we don’t have to worry about Suguri coming back and decapitating me for fun. You know he hates my guts, don’t you?”

Taki nodded glumly.

“Okay, then. Get some sleep.” Klaus kissed him again, this time holding him close, licking into him slowly, until he couldn’t hold back and he let his tongue roam free and aggressive in Taki’s mouth. The soft moan emanating from Taki made Klaus’s cock twitch in his trousers. He broke their kiss—as much as he hated to do it—and rested his forehead on Taki’s. He had to get the fuck out of there and if he continued kissing him, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from doing all those other things. “If you can…if you can make some kind of excuse, come to my apartment as soon as you can manage. Tell Suguri I want to go over game plans…I don’t know…tell him we’ll go to the stadium together and he can meet up with you there. Shit. Taki. I think…” Klaus wanted to say _I think I love you_ , but he knew it would sound totally insane and he didn’t want Taki to laugh at him. So, he said instead, “I think everything will be alright. I’ll make it alright. I promise.” Klaus kissed his hand and left without looking back at Taki. He couldn’t bear seeing his beautiful face.

***

Klaus had managed to cram in five hours of sleep after he got back to Queens. In fact, he had slept way past his usual rise-and-shine hour of eight in the morning. He was toweling off his hair after a much-needed hot shower when he heard the buzzer on his intercom. He lived in a tiny studio apartment and that buzzer was damn loud.

Klaus mashed the speaker button. “Yeah? Who the fuck is it?”

“It’s me,” came a shy voice. “It’s Taki.”

“Oh! _Taki_. Hey…hi…”

“Um…did I wake you?”

“No! Fuck no! Shit. I’ll buzz you in.”

“Okay.”

Taki was all abashed when Klaus opened the door to his apartment. Christ. _I’m_ the one who should be embarrassed, Klaus thought. Taki’s condo was a fucking palace compared to his own sorry digs. He didn’t even have an elevator. He ushered Taki in as soon as he knocked and shut the door behind him, locked the deadbolt in case Suguri had followed Taki and was waiting outside in the stairwell with a semi-automatic or some kickass samurai sword. He couldn’t risk dying before he had a chance to do all the things he wanted to do with Taki.

“How are you? Did you sleep alright?” Klaus asked. He waved Taki over to the beat up leather sofa in what served as his ‘living room.’ Taki sat, back rigid, a small Duane Reade* bag nestled in his lap. Taki squeezed the bag now and then, crunching the plastic. He was nervous. Klaus was just glad he had donned some clothes after his shower, even if it was a ratty t-shirt and faded sweats, thin from too many cycles in the wash. At least that was one layer of protection between him and lust, between him and Taki seeing his effect on his cock. “Listen, let me put something clean on. This…” and Klaus gestured to his sweats, “…I need to throw this in the laundry.” He hurried into his bedroom, the only room with a door besides the bathroom, and took a deep breath after closing it. Then he switched out the sweats for a pair of jeans, the snuggest one he had, and a loose hockey jersey, one that covered his crotch. It would have to suffice.

Taki stood up and then sat back down when Klaus came back out.

“Have you had breakfast yet? Do you want something to eat?” Klaus offered.

“Y-Yes. I ate already. Suguri-san and I…we had breakfast together.”

Suguri had returned at seven-thirty that morning, bright-eyed and energetic, and pulled Taki out of bed for a meal at Balthazar. Suguri was partial to French food. Over fluffy mushroom and goat cheese omelets, flaky croissants stuffed with almond paste, and bowls of creamy café au lait, Taki had made the excuses that Klaus suggested earlier. Suguri must have been reliving his night’s escapades because he had smiled absently and said, “Of course, of course. Do what you must. You’re here to play baseball, are you not?”

Taki had patiently eaten his breakfast, his stomach in knots; he couldn’t let on that he was perched on cloud nine and desperate to fall back into Klaus’s arms. Would Klaus kiss him again, like that, with his tongue in his mouth and making him shiver? And now he was here, sitting on Klaus’s shitty sofa, in his shitty apartment, this paragon of manhood offering to feed him. Taki was so giddy he gripped the scuffed and stained sofa cushion lest he float past cloud nine and into outer space.

“If you haven’t eaten, please, don’t let me interrupt you,” Taki said.

“Uh…” Klaus was hungry, starving in fact, but his curiosity was getting the best of him. “What’s in the bag?”

Taki’s eyes widened, that rosy hue ghosting his cheeks once more. Then he stared down at the bag as if he didn’t even know why it was sitting in his lap.

“Taki?” Klaus prodded. He sat down next to him and stroked his back gently. “Is everything okay? Are you sick?”

“No. I’m not sick.” Or was he? Wasn’t he? Isn’t love some kind of madness? He was most definitely ill then. Without a word, Taki opened the bag and took out the contents with a trembling hand. He placed each object on the coffee table in front of them: a box of condoms and a small bottle of lubricant.

Klaus’s jaw hit the floor. And he was no longer interested in sating his hunger with anything as ordinary as bacon and eggs.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Duane Reade is a popular chain of pharmacies in New York City.


	14. Chapter 14

 

It was almost quarter past eleven in the morning. Klaus had glanced at the clock on the nightstand after he had swept Taki up in his arms and thrown him onto his unmade bed. They would have to be at the stadium and out on the field for stretches and batting practice by two in the afternoon; that gave him roughly two hours to…holy shit! He didn’t know what the helll he was doing. Klaus had only slept with women before, and all of them—save for that girl he had fingered in fifth grade and whose name he couldn’t even recall—had been horny sorority sisters in college and then paid ‘escorts’ in Vegas who specialized in blowjobs, handjobs, and five minute quickies, no kissing, thank you very much. What did he know about _making love_? Because that’s what he wanted to do right now. He didn’t want to have meaningless sex. He wanted to make Taki fall in love with him, he wanted to give him pleasure, wanted to convince Taki to never look at anyone else _that way_.

Taki was squirming and panting beneath him, clutching at his shirt, trying to pull it over Klaus’s head. Klaus reared up on his knees and yanked his Martin Brodeur #30 NJ Devil’s jersey off and tossed it into the floor. Then he remembered the condoms and lube still sitting on his coffee table.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Taki. It took only seconds for Klaus to grab the stuff and return to the bedroom, but Taki had his own socks off and his belt unbuckled by the time Klaus was back by his side. “Here, let me,” Klaus whispered as he carefully unbuttoned Taki’s shirt. It would have been a lot more fun and way more macho to just tear it apart, rip it right off of him, but he couldn’t let Taki show up at the stadium looking as if he’d been mugged on the street or wearing one of Klaus’s own shirts like Taki was the girlfriend who had stayed overnight.

Klaus pushed the undamaged shirt off Taki’s shoulders and ran his hands over his pale, hairless skin. It was like porcelain, as smooth and delicate. He rubbed his thumbs against each pink nipple, his own cock hardening as they stood to attention. Klaus bent and licked one, then the other, groaning in sync with Taki’s halting moans.

“Klaus,” Taki said, his voice so soft yet urgent, his hands coming around to cradle his head. “Klaus…”

Klaus pushed him down and kissed into his mouth, his tongue searching for Taki’s, then sucking hard when he found it. Taki arched into him even as Klaus ground his hips against Taki’s thighs, reached up and tangled his fingers in his obsidian hair. “Fuck, Taki, you taste so good, smell so good. You want this, right? This isn’t my imagination?” He broke their kiss to gaze into Taki’s eyes.

“K-Klaus,” Taki stuttered, his cheeks flushed a rosy pink. He didn’t say anything else, but the yearning in his face told Klaus everything he needed to know.

Alrighty, then, thought Klaus, time to get busy and fake it till I make it. He’d treat Taki like a woman. Yeah. At least he knew what to do with a woman. How much different could it be with a guy? Just find a hole and use any weapon at your disposal, right? Isn’t that what every man did? Wasn’t that programmed into their DNA? Have cock. Get hard. Insert. Thrust. Repeat. But that approach wasn’t exactly romantic, was it? It may have sufficed for sorority and call girls, but Taki didn’t fall into either category. He was in a category all his own, high on a pedestal, and Klaus wanted to keep him there.

“Have you…Have you done this before?” Klaus asked. “With a man, I mean. Have you ever been with a man?”

Taki blinked in confusion, then he lowered his gaze shyly. “I-I haven’t. I haven’t been with anyone. Ever.”

Oh, fucking hell. Taki had brought along condoms and lube and Klaus had just assumed that meant that the kid was experienced, sorta, kinda, oh god, _please_ let him be experienced! But no. This was bad. Taki was a total virgin, which made this venture into guy-on-guy action a full-blown train wreck just waiting to happen.

Taki saw the hesitation on Klaus’s face—he couldn’t hide his doubt, his fear—and said quietly, “I’m a virgin, Klaus, because…no matter.” Taki gulped and tried again. “I may be a virgin, but I’m not _ignorant_. I know what to expect.”

“Do you?” asked Klaus. “Do you really know what to expect? Because I sure as hell don’t.” Well, that was a lie more or less and it only made Klaus feel worse about what he wanted to do with Taki. “You’re not a girl, Taki. Girls have nice wet pussies made for this. But even when a girl does it for the first time…it hurts. They bleed. Did you know that?”

“Yes, I know that. I know I’m not a girl. And I know it’ll still hurt,” Taki murmured. “I read it all on the internet.”

“Shit.” Klaus rolled onto his back and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know if I can do this.” The idea of hurting Taki that way was something he didn’t want to think about, even if his cock had other ideas. And, boy, did it have other ideas. Klaus was so hard it was painful, even with the guilt and the uncertainty, his dick was ready to rock and roll.

“I can do it,” Taki insisted. He leaned up on an elbow and placed a hand on Klaus’s bare chest. “I want to.” Taki had indeed done his research. He had trolled the online forums, read the comments, taken the advice to heart. “If you sit up, I can…we can go slow. You don’t have to worry, Klaus. I can stop if it’s too much.”

The brain in Klaus's skull was still equivocating, but the brain that ruled his body was opening his mouth and saying the words, “Well…okay…if you’re sure.” Klaus stripped off his jeans, then leaned up against the headboard, his cock rigid against his flat belly, and watched Taki step out of his trousers and briefs by the side of the bed. Taki was equally hard, his erection jutting out stiffly and already leaking. Klaus’s mouth watered. He wanted his lips around that cock, his tongue bathing every inch of it.

“Taki…” he mumbled hoarsely. He threw Taki down onto the mattress and flung his slender legs over his shoulders, gripped his thighs tightly so he couldn’t wriggle free and swallowed his cock in one quick movement. As soon as the head of his cock hit the back of Klaus’s throat, Taki cried out, a desperate, frantic scream, and he came, bucking and thrashing even as Klaus gripped his hips hard enough to bruise. Klaus drank it all down, every drop of Taki’s sweet cum. He had never tasted anything so good.

Klaus pulled off of him and flopped onto his back next to Taki, gave them both a few moments to catch their breath. He wanted to calm himself down for what was coming next. He wanted it to last longer than five seconds.

“I’m sorry,” Taki whimpered. “That was really…inconsiderate of me.”

“Don’t apologize,” Klaus grinned as he reached for the box of condoms on the nightstand. “You’re really sensitive, aren’t you?” He ripped a packet open between his teeth and rolled on the rubber as Taki watched with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

This is it, thought Taki, this is for real. No more humping pillows, no more satisfying himself with his fingers in the shower, no more pretending. Klaus was his fantasy come true and this man was drawing him into his arms, lifting Taki into his lap. The vow he had made to his gods to remain chaste had flown completely out the window and was probably hurtling somewhere past Neptune right now. Good riddance! He’d have to marry some girl in a year’s time, but he’d have _this_ and have it _now_ even if his gods took everything else away.

The pressure of slick fingers against his entrance brought Taki back to reality. When had Klaus opened the lube?

“Ah! Ungh!” Taki gasped as Klaus pushed one and then two fingers inside him in quick succession. He was staring into Taki’s face with an expression that looked terrifying and… _rabid_ , his jaw clenched, the veins on his neck throbbing with excitement. “Klaus, I want you to—”

“Go faster?” Klaus offered eagerly. “You want more?” He pushed in another finger without waiting for Taki to answer, not that he _could_ have answered because the discomfort was rendering him speechless. Sounds were falling from Taki’s mouth in an incoherent jumble. He made as much sense as a babbling brook. And then his mind shut down completely when Klaus abruptly pulled his fingers free and pushed in with his cock with no warning other than a low guttural growl.

The pain wasn’t at all what Taki had imagined it would be. For a split second, he had felt nothing; and then it was as if every nerve ending in his body had decided to congregate in his ass and treat him like he was some hapless birthday party victim opening the door to his apartment as all his friends yell out gleefully, “Surprise!” Surprise, indeed. It felt like a fucking four alarm fire down there! Taki made a feeble attempt to scramble away but Klaus was gripping his buttocks so tightly he couldn’t move, he didn’t know what hurt more, his insides or his outsides. Yikes! Taki fell forward in Klaus’s lap, bracing his hands on his broad shoulders even as he sank further onto his cock. His legs had transformed into two boneless tubes of flesh, he couldn’t hold himself up and everything was moving so fast he could hardly breathe.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” Is that _me_ mewling like that? Taki wondered. This feels so fucking awful! Shit! Shit! Shit! Why did I think I could…oh…oh…wow…what the… 

Klaus was kissing and sucking at his ears, at his neck, on his chest, biting and nipping, licking and nibbling and his cock was sliding through him at last as his muscles finally unclenched, finally gave up the fight and gave in to the most unbelievable sensation of fullness, of thick hard pressure filling him to bursting. 

“I can’t…I can’t believe…what is that? K-Klaus!” Klaus’s cock was rubbing him in a way that was maddening and all Taki could do was grind his hips and pant into the feeling, like scratching an itch inside him and good god it felt like nothing else he had ever experienced. Taki reached down and wantonly stroked his own cock and that was the end of him. Klaus bucked up into him hard and Taki was coming, they both were coming, Klaus deep inside him, Taki all over the front of their chests. He couldn’t even see straight, he had never had an orgasm so intense. 

“Holy shit,” Klaus mumbled. He was drenched in sweat even though he had remained predominantly still throughout their lovemaking. He released his hold on Taki and traced his fingers through Taki’s cum, brought them to his own lips and licked them clean. Then he kissed back into Taki’s mouth so he could taste himself. “Not bad for a first time, eh?” Klaus knew he sounded like a smug bastard but he couldn’t help himself. He’d just given Taki a monster orgasm and left him looking completely fucked out. What man wouldn’t give himself a hearty pat on the back for that? This would surely rank as the most amazing fuck ever for Taki and Klaus had been the man responsible for such a feat. Klaus was ready to go into the kitchen for a well-earned Taylor ham and egg breakfast sandwich when he heard Taki speak intelligibly for the first time in the last twenty minutes. 

Taki's voice was hoarse but there was no mistaking what he said. “Again.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-con/rape in this chapter. You are WARNED. If non-con or even dub-con is a trigger, please heed the warning.

 

If Taki’s gods were pissed about the violation of his chastity vow, then they weren’t wasting any time having a field day inflicting their wrath on Klaus first. Perhaps they would get around to punishing Taki later, after there was nothing left of Klaus except a shriveled pile of skin and bones. An hour or so ago, it had seemed like the most unbelievable stroke of luck: Taki was offering his body up to him and Klaus had accepted this precious gift with the kind of awe and adoration befitting its sacred worth and meaning. Yep, so far, so good.

Taki was young, but at twenty-six Klaus still considered himself to be young, too. What’s six years difference at their age? Their lovemaking was hot and heavy and Klaus, who had always approached sex with the gusto of a four hundred pound man bellying up to an all-you-can-eat buffet, was overjoyed at Taki’s enthusiasm. Until. Until Klaus found that he couldn’t keep up. Taki had little to no stamina—it took practically no effort to make him come—but none of that mattered because he was insatiable. He could come and come and come with almost no lag time. He reminded Klaus of that one song by Ludacris with the lyrics, “A lady in the street but a freak in the bed…” That was Taki in a nutshell: a proper gentleman in public and a voracious sex kitten in bed.

And Klaus’s dick couldn’t take it anymore.

“Taki…Taki…okay, stop. Stop!” Klaus sat up and pulled Taki off his cock. Taki had been blowing him to no avail but, for crying out loud, they’d already done it twice in the last hour and a half and Klaus was at the end of his rope.

“What is it, Klaus?” asked Taki. He neatly wiped the saliva off his chin on the back of his hand. “Am I doing it wrong?”

Klaus flopped back down and threw an arm over his eyes. He couldn’t stand to see the look of disappointment on Taki’s face. “No, you’re doing it just fine. I just…I need five, okay?”

“Five _minutes_?” Taki asked with that upward lilt in his voice that suggested boundless hope on his part.

Klaus groaned. “More like five _hours_.”

“Oh! But…we have to get to the stadium in _one_ hour. I thought we could do it again…”

“Not gonna happen, sweetheart.” Klaus lifted his arm and peered out at Taki. “Shit. Don’t you dare pull that face on me.” Taki’s eyes were wide and wet, his hair a wild mess, and his neck, chest, and thighs were peppered with mouth-shaped welts from where Klaus had bitten and sucked into him. And yet, Taki still looked so fuck hungry. My god, Klaus thought, he had unleashed some kind of nympho-vampire in the shape of a disarmingly innocent raven-haired boy.

Taki licked his lips and suggested helpfully, “We could take turns if you need a rest.” He crawled on top of Klaus and began pushing his legs apart. “I could do to you what you did to me…”

Klaus relaxed under the light weight of Taki’s body, the words taking their sweet old time meandering into his ears and registering in his brain. Then the lights went on and blew his mind to smithereens. “Wh-What? Are you insane? No dude is ever gonna—”

The indignant rant faded before it really got rolling, though, because a most unpleasant memory had reappeared like a bad penny. It was Klaus’s freshman year at Penn State and he had gone to a frat party held at the house used by the football team and gotten drunk on beer and tequila. The music was loud and the girls were sexy and loose, especially the redhead named Tanya who was openly flirting with Klaus in the kitchen as they both waited for their turn at the keg. When Klaus asked her if she had a boyfriend, she told him she had a jealous ex, and then pulled him down the hallway and into a bedroom where all the jackets had been thrown. The next thing he knew, she was rolling a condom onto his rock hard erection with her _mouth_ and then things were _on_ between them. 

She was moaning and keening beneath him, her legs wrapped high around his waist as he rutted into her. It was his first semester on campus and he was getting lucky already. Good job, me! Klaus grinned to himself. When her cries hit a high note and she suddenly held her breath and went rigid, he figured she was on the verge of her climax. A self-satisfied smile spread across his lips as he opened his eyes and gazed down into her face. He wanted to see her come and revel in what he had done to her: fucked her to a first-rate orgasm. 

Except, she wasn’t looking back at him. She was looking over his shoulder with a startled expression. And then he smelled it: Axe body spray, a deodorant popular among middle school boys and older guys who should know better. Klaus had gotten a heavy whiff of it when he had first walked through the front door of the frat house and past one of the guys on the football team, a bearded beast with the ridiculous build of a center or a nose tackle. The meathead had obviously doused himself with the cheapo spray, probably believing the ads that claimed the scent would attract hoards of girls. 

Klaus wasn’t a girl and he was thoroughly put off by the smell. He didn’t need to turn his head to see if it was the same guy because he heard a grunt behind him and then a huge fist wrap around the back of his neck, holding him in place. If Klaus hadn’t been so bombed, he might have been able to do more than freeze. He might have even thrown the guy off of him and altered his body from a solid to a liquid state. But the alcohol was slowing everything down to a crawl, dulling his instincts and keeping his body numb, but not numb enough to block out the sudden searing pain between his bared ass cheeks as the guy fucked into him. Oh, for the love of god! Klaus thought. This _cannot_ be happening! 

But happen it did. And over his confusion and rage, he heard the guy growl over his back, “No frosh on the fucking _baseball_ team comes into _my_ house and gets to fuck _my_ girl without payback.” 

Klaus couldn’t believe it when the girl, the bastard’s ‘ex’ who wasn’t really his ex, started moaning again in excitement as her boyfriend had his way with Klaus’s virgin ass. Klaus thought for sure his dick would go soft—this was all so humiliating and goddamn if it didn’t hurt like hell—but his cock had a mind of its own apparently and wasn’t concerned with the fact that his ass was getting railed by this horrid smelling bastard and his lying girlfriend. His cock was being thrust into Tanya’s slick pussy with every violent snap of Meathead’s hips and something…something else was taking over his body, something he had no control over. Meathead’s cock was hitting him inside _just so_. He didn’t know what it was, but the dude was mashing some kind of mysterious pleasure button and, fuck it all, he was going to come despite the pain and the shame and the fury. 

And now the memory of that insane night made Klaus break out in a sweat all over again. He had indeed come—all three of them had—and he had written the whole incident off as a ‘learning experience’ because he would not, could not let something like that ruin his life. He wasn’t going to let that Tanya and her disgusting boyfriend take anything away from him. No fucking way. Besides, he wasn’t afraid to test the boundaries of his own sexuality, not like _that_ of course, but he was open and willing to try almost anything once. Maybe he was making excuses as a means of moving on from it, who knows, but having done it against his will, Klaus had decided that it was something he never wanted to revisit. Taki’s suggestion that they ‘take turns’ had caught him completely by surprise and, now, round three was definitely not going to happen. 

It made Klaus wonder if what he was doing with Taki was somehow wrong. Was he taking advantage of someone younger, inexperienced, and very naïve? Sure, Taki was gagging for it practically, but doesn’t a kid beg for candy at every meal? Does that mean you should give the kid as much candy as he wants? What if Taki wakes up one day and realizes that his virginity was stolen by a cunning wolf? Would that make Klaus no better than that asshole footballer? He desperately hoped not. 

Klaus stroked Taki’s face, pulled him down for a sweet kiss. “We can take turns sucking each other off, Cutie Pie, but not the other thing.” 

“Okay,” Taki replied. “When can we do the other thing?” 

Another loud groan escaped Klaus’s throat. “God help me,” he muttered at the ceiling. 

You don’t need help from any god, thought Taki. I know just what to do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I wasn’t trying to torture Klaus in this chapter, honest! I was using as a loose reference an episode from Inariya’s doujinshi Paws Without Humanity: Taki (in his cat persona) introduces Klaus (in his wolf persona) to his Ferdinand tank (Onokami) and then ends up getting high and horny on catnip. Klaus, ever the eager lover, proceeds to do the nasty with Taki on top of the tank’s hull. Little does Klaus know that Onokami is one angry, jealous tank when it comes to Taki. End result: Klaus gets railed by Onokami’s, uh, gun turret. Ouch! 
> 
> Yeah, you read that right: Klaus got topped by a tank while making sweet love to Taki. I couldn’t make up something like that.


	16. Chapter 16

 

Klaus had just enough time to pick up a huge roast beef sandwich from the deli across the street before heading to the stadium with Taki. They had capped off their inaugural sexfest by jacking each other off in the shower at super sonic speed so they wouldn’t be late for warm-up and stretches. Taki wasn’t slated to pitch until Tuesday, but Klaus might be called upon to catch or bat at some point for this Sunday night’s game and he needed to be ready for anything. He would worry about the thoroughly wrecked sheets later. 

Sure enough—because Klaus was hungover from too much alcohol and sex within the last twenty-four hours—he was asked to pinch hit in the fifth inning when Terry pulled a double switch. D’Arnaud was due up at the plate the next inning but still shaky after coming off the DL and Plawecki, who normally platooned with d’Arnaud, had a stomach bug and couldn’t play. Seth Lugo, one of their more reliable starters, was getting walloped by the Dodger hitters, so Terry called for reliever Hansel Robles. Robles was unpredictable at best and Klaus was good at blocking wild pitches, unlike d’Arnaud, who was setting a record for passed balls it seemed. 

“Get your gear on, Wolfstadt!” Terry yelled out to him before trotting out to the home plate umpire to make the switch. 

Klaus hurriedly strapped on his shin guards and pads and grabbed his mask and mitt. He didn’t exactly have his mind on the game; instead of studying the scouting reports, he had been busy noticing how Taki wasn’t sitting on the bench like usual. No, he was standing at the railing, his ass probably aching like hell from the pounding Klaus had given him earlier that day. Maybe that’ll teach the kid not to be so greedy, Klaus mused. 

Mind on the game or not, when Klaus stepped into the batter’s box during their bottom half of the inning, he felt strangely focused. The noise of the stadium faded into the background and he could literally see the ball coming off of Clayton Kershaw’s fingers with absolute clarity, could see the seams spinning in a certain direction and knew exactly what the pitch was coming in at him at 98+ miles per hour. Fastball, sinker, slider, curve. He took the last pitch—a hanging curve—deep into the upper deck of right field just inside the foul pole. He went the other way during his next at-bat, with a shot that landed in the visiting team’s bullpen. Klaus hadn’t logged in a home run all season and now he had hit two no-doubters in the space of an hour and a half. 

Up in the SNY broadcast booth, Gary Cohen was shouting after Klaus’s second homer, “And that’s _another_ one outta here! Wow, that was a _laser beam_ and it left in a hurry. The Mets’ rookie catcher is on fire tonight!” 

Not to be outdone, Keith Hernandez dealt one of his gems, “I tell ya, Gare, you could hang clothes on that line drive.”* 

*** 

Thanks to Klaus’s home runs, the Mets eked out a win against the hated Dodgers 7-6, a rare victory considering Los Angeles had their ace on the mound. The guys were still congratulating Klaus at his locker afterwards, but Klaus only had eyes for Taki, who shook Klaus’s hand and blushed as he smiled up at him. Klaus was grinning like a fool and then he grabbed Taki’s arm when the smaller man turned to go to his own locker and whispered something in his ear that made Taki blush even more. 

Matt tossed his jersey into the laundry pile and blew out a disgusted huff of air. He had been stealthily observing the two of them from across the locker room for some minutes and now he’d seen enough to confirm whatever suspicions he had rolling around in his twisted mind. He casually sauntered over, pointed to Taki’s flushed face and said to Klaus, “His eyes are up here, pervert.” 

Said eyes almost fell out of Taki’s head. 

Matt was just getting started though. He turned to Taki and murmured into his ear, “And you, Little Miss Strawberry Shortcake, don’t make the rest of us watch you jerking your dog’s chain unless you’re willing to let us in on the fun.” Matt whispered in an even quieter voice, “I’d be open to a three-way, you know. Just name the time and place.” 

Klaus, who was standing right there in disbelief, heard every word of course and, in a flash, he had Matt in a chokehold from behind while he punched him in the ribs three or four times before Noah and Josh Smoker, one of the relievers, pulled them apart. Terry Collins rushed out of the manager’s office when he heard the commotion. He was not happy. He tunneled through the crowd of men gathered around the offenders and laid into them in typical Terry Collins fashion. 

“If you two bozos want to act like…like bums fighting over a crust of bread on the soup line, then I’ll have you both thrown in the clink!” Terry was livid, his usual nasal twang growing more pronounced as his anger rose, an aged finger wagging in their faces. And, Jesus, how _old_ was Terry? Bozos? Bums? Soup line? The clink? Was this 1920s Depression Era America or what? “Now hit the showers and I don’t want to hear another peep from any of you. That goes for you, too, Hello Kitty.” Terry pointed to Taki, who stood almost even with him in height. “You may have been quite the big shot in Japan, but I won’t have you sashaying around here getting my boys all riled up with that cute little ass of yours. You get my drift? _Comprende_? _Domo arigato_?” 

Ryuichi Watanabe had been late getting to the scene and was now standing behind Terry with his mouth gaping. His face was red with mortification, but it wasn’t nearly as red as Taki’s after Terry’s verbal shellacking. The two Japanese men shared a look of commiseration before Taki bowed to Terry in apology. Klaus quickly followed suit, and then Matt grudgingly nodded his head to the Mets manager. Terry wasn’t done yet. He turned back to Klaus. 

“You hit two home runs today, Wolfman Jack, so I’m letting you off the hook this one time. That’s _one time_.” Terry stuck his finger back in Klaus’s face just in case he didn’t know what ‘one time’ looked like. He kept his finger right there between Klaus’s eyes and continued scolding, “Pull a stunt like this again, attack your own teammate, even one such as this…this…” Terry waved his other hand in Matt’s direction as he struggled for words, “…sorry excuse for a human being…this _former_ super hero, now broken down piece of shit…” And then, just like that, Terry lost interest in being pissed off as his stomach gave a loud growl. He asked cheerfully instead, “Hey, who’s up for ribs tonight? We won boys. My treat! Let’s celebrate!” He hurried out of the locker room to conduct his post-game press interview so he could get down to the business of eating dinner and the men dispersed. If Terry was paying, then they wouldn’t miss out on a free meal at Blue Smoke. 

The dressing down was effective for all of ten minutes. As soon as Taki walked into the showers, he was serenaded by a chorus of wolf whistles and catcalls from the other players. Matt, who was immune to Terry’s diatribes, was the first to comment on the state of Taki’s naked body. 

“Hey everybody,” Matt teased as Taki let drop the towel he was holding in front of him. “Get a load of these hickeys! Shortcake, did you get attacked by a coven of vampires or something? You know what these are, don’t you? Did you know they’re called love bites? Who gave them to you? Anyone we know?” Both Matt and Taki looked immediately at Klaus, Matt with his most triumphant I-dare-you-to-punch-me-in-the-mouth smirk and Taki with his eyes wide and imploring, silently pleading with Klaus _not_ to fall for Matt’s baiting. 

Klaus forced himself to swallow his fury. He was the one who had put Taki in this humiliating predicament, after all. Those were _his_ kiss marks all over him. Shit. He should have thought of that—how it would _look_ —before he had feasted on Taki’s pale unblemished skin. And now Taki had to endure the… 

“Holy shit!” Matt was genuinely surprised. “Are these _hand prints_ on your ass?” 

Taki gasped. He had turned towards the wall in a futile attempt to hide the front of his body from the eyes of his teammates, but that left his backside exposed to the room and…he didn’t know what to do! Front and back, the evidence was just hanging out there for anyone to see: he’d recently been manhandled every which way. That’s right. No _woman_ could have left those kinds of prints, not unless she were some kind of Amazon with dinner plate-sized palms. The room erupted in raucous laughter and shouted obscenities and all Taki could do was soap up like nothing could hurt him now. He had sunk to the lowest nadir on earth, even lower than the bottom of the Marianas Trench. He might as well be dead and buried and at least Terry was stuck in the press conference and wouldn’t join in on the fun. 

Taki was reaching for the shampoo bottle, his heart doing jumping jacks and various other calisthenics in his chest, when the room went silent all of a sudden. He turned around and saw Suguri standing at the entrance with his hands on his hips and an expression of utter disgust plastered all over his face. The man was growling, a low and threatening rumble from deep in his throat. It’s the sound an alpha wolf makes before he rips another animal apart, limb from limb. Even Matt shut his trap and faced the wall. Klaus didn’t dare look at the man. He was going to be dismembered by Suguri, but if Matt met the same fate, then some good would have come of it, this terrible transgression he had committed. 

Klaus’s mind was racing as he stared down at his feet. “Just don’t punish Taki,” Klaus would beg when the time came. He would get down on his knees before Suguri and plead for Taki to be spared. “Punish me instead!” Suguri would hopefully nod and then chop his head off nice and neat and quick. Didn’t he see a katana hanging on the wall of the living room in Taki’s condo? That would work just fine, and it wouldn’t be the worst way to go, would it? Would it?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * I am quoting Keith Hernandez verbatim, although I can’t remember who he was actually talking about when he made this gem of a comment.
> 
> I’ll be taking a short break from this to catch up on work I’m writing for the football fandom, but will be back in a week or so if all goes well.


	17. Chapter 17

 

It was Tuesday and Klaus arrived at the stadium early, anxious to check the roster. He confirmed with his manager that Taki was indeed set to pitch against the Colorado Rockies, who had flown in the night before, and he would be catching Taki as usual. Klaus was still alive. How and why he didn’t know. After that incident in the shower on Sunday night when the entire team had seen the marks on Taki’s body, Klaus had quickly washed up, dressed, and went straight home while the rest of the guys got treated to a tasty dinner of smoked brisket and barbecued ribs by their manager. Klaus couldn’t have eaten even if he had dared to go after the look that Suguri gave him as he walked by him. The man was standing in front of Taki’s locker while Taki dressed after his shower, glaring and guarding him like a pit bull. No one glanced their way, especially not Klaus, who wished he could make his six-foot-four frame disappear into the floor. He would end up a mysterious stain in the ground soon enough he figured. Once Suguri was done slicing and dicing him with that Ginzu knife, they’d need his dental records to ID his remains. 

He tracked down Watanabe and found out that Taki hadn’t gone out to eat with the team on Sunday night either. Being a vegetarian for the most part made it pointless for him to go to a rib joint for dinner, so Taki had made his polite excuses to Terry, but the grim expression on Suguri’s face told the real story. The kid was going to get an additional verbal ass whooping from his chaperone, so Terry had clapped Taki on the shoulder and said, “Good luck with the rest of your night, son. See you on Tuesday.” 

That’s what Watanabe told Klaus as they played a round of Wii Golf in the mostly empty clubhouse. It was eleven-thirty and only staff members were there. Even the rookies didn’t normally arrive until noon at the earliest, but Klaus had been so jittery he had to get out of his apartment. He hadn’t had any contact with Taki since Sunday. He hadn’t even dared to text him in case Suguri was checking. 

“Chikusho!” Watanabe swore as he sliced the ball into the tree line. “Taki-sama left with Suguri-san that night. I think they were going to Blue Ribbon for dinner.” 

Neither Watanabe nor Klaus had seen Noah speaking quietly to Suguri in the players’ lot outside the stadium before getting into the car with them. Only Matt had seen; nothing got past the Dark Knight, especially if it involved Thor, his rival, the thorn in his side and the unwitting architect of his downfall from glory. Matt had been Gotham’s savior until Warthen ruined his arm. No matter, he had worked like a madman to rehab from the surgery and come roaring back, only to suffer another injury which sent him back to the operating room and another rehab stint. This time, though, a big blond obstacle had materialized in his absence and stolen his thunder, toppled him from the heights of the Empire State Building and sucked up all the adulation that had once been his and his alone. Noah was younger, taller, better than him. The fans went berserk over that humungous flaxen-haired geek, nicknamed him Thor in half a second and put him on the throne. 

Nothing hurt worse than that day in September last year when Noah had returned from his own surgery and rehab and Matt had to play second fiddle in the worst way: Noah would _start_ the game—pitch one inning to prove to the fans that he was back to being a god—and Matt would pitch in fucking _relief_ , like the servant who picks up after the master. Noah had been brilliant in his one inning, throwing just five pitches to set down all three batters, and Matt’s heart had sank as he waited in the bullpen. Would the fans boo him when he came out in relief, would they chant, “We want Thor!” as he made the long walk out to the mound? The fans had been kind that day; they didn’t boo him or throw garbage onto the field, but it had still been the worst day of his life. He wouldn’t forget the humiliation he had suffered, not while he was still stuck on this cursed team, still swallowing all the shit while Noah roamed the halls of Valhalla with his fucking hammer. If the Dark Knight was now the hated Loki, so be it. He’d have his day sooner or later. 

*** 

On Monday Klaus had taken the train out to New Jersey to visit his sister. Claudia was a plant breeder and her specialty was roses. She worked for a local nursery that provided most of the plant material for the surrounding towns, towns that boasted huge mansions sited on lots averaging two acres or more. Spring and early summer was a busy time of year for her and Mondays were her only day off each week during the active landscaping season. The modest home she shared with her husband was just four blocks from the train station, an easy walk through a leafy upper middle class suburb in the very same town she and Klaus had grown up in. She was waiting for him on the back patio with lunch prepared: Caprese salad, antipasto, a bottle of Lambrusco, and a loaf of panella already on the table. 

“Hey, sis.” Klaus hugged and kissed her and set down the two pastry boxes he had brought along. The day was sunny and cloudless and many of the rose bushes were already heavily laden with blooms. It was early July, one week before the All-Star break; Noah and Yoenis Céspedes were the only Mets players voted in this year, not much of a surprise, but neither would be in the starting line-up. 

Claudia peeked into the boxes and squealed with delight. “Macarons _and_ cronuts? Well, forget lunch, let’s just go straight to dessert!”

His sister had always had a sweet tooth even if he didn’t. When they were kids, they’d go trick-or-treating on Halloween and then he’d give all his candy to her afterwards. He was just in it for the opportunity to scream his lungs out at strangers’ doors dressed up like a zombie or the Grim Reaper. Good times. 

Klaus grabbed the bottle of Lambrusco, uncorked it, and poured out two glasses, handing one to his sister. Claudia had chilled the red wine slightly; its cool, mildly bitter and fizzy taste and texture would be perfect on such a hot day. “Cheers,” said Klaus, raising his glass and taking a sip. 

“Cheers to you, too,” Claudia smiled back. They had been raised on the sweet wines of northern Germany made from grape varietals suitable for colder climes—Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Elbling—but she knew Klaus preferred the wines of Italy, France, Spain, Argentina, New Zealand. She had a bottle of Prosecco in the fridge; Klaus would drink that for dessert. 

“I’m starving, sis. And this looks fantastic.” Klaus dug into his plate. “Remember those tomatoes mom used to grow? Nothing tastes like that anymore.” 

“Yeah. My heirlooms won’t be ready for another month. These are the best I could get at the market.” She watched Klaus eat for a moment. He looked oddly resigned. “You’re not talking baseball for once,” she teased, “even though you hit two home runs last night. That’s not something that happens everyday. Don’t you want to brag a little?” 

He tore off a piece of bread and dipped one end into the shallow dish of olive oil before chewing thoughtfully on it. He didn’t know what to say to her without sounding bananas. “I found it, Claudia. That thing grandpa always talked about, that thing that would tell us when we’d found our other half...well, I found it.” He cast a furtive glance in her direction before helping himself to another slice of mozzarella. “That’s why I hit those two home runs. It’s a sign.” And now Suguri was lying in wait to murder him in all likelihood. He’d finally found his soulmate in Taki and their affair would be over as soon as it had begun. 

Claudia just stared. Then she put her fork down and refilled their glasses. “Well, you’ve either lost your mind or you’re in love.” 

Klaus sighed deeply. “What's the difference? I’m a dead man either way.” 

“So who is she? Some fan who flashed you her tits? Was that really enough to make you hit two home runs? You wanted to show off that much?” Her baby brother did lots of stupid, impulsive things, but she wasn’t going to let him fall in love with just _any_ woman. “You better bring her around so I can check her out. I’m not going to let you make a fool of yourself. All those hookers you’ve been screwing in Vegas have warped your idea of love.” 

His first impulse was to argue with her. She was wrong on every count, after all. But then it sank in: maybe she was right in the ‘big picture’ sense, maybe his perception of reality was being distorted by his out-of-control feelings. The truth was, every time he got a whiff of Taki’s scent, his brain went on the fritz; every time he looked into Taki’s blue-black eyes, he felt the breath knocked out of him; every time he even thought of him, his heart ached so fucking badly in his chest. He _had_ to be the one, his one and only. What else _could_ it mean? So instead of arguing, he just grinned sheepishly and said, “Don’t worry, sis. I don’t plan on running off and eloping.” 

*** 

Suguri was disappointed in himself more than anything. He had let Taki go to Klaus’s apartment on his own that Sunday and then spent the rest of the morning scrolling through the photos Aikawa-san had sent him of herself in sexy poses. Damn, that sports journalist looked delectable in that French maid’s outfit! She was waiting for Suguri by the dugout when he arrived at the stadium during batting practice and he hadn’t even spoken to Taki by the time the game started. Suguri was too caught up in this new dalliance and, besides, Taki was a big boy, he could get through a day without Suguri holding his hand, right? Apparently Taki had gotten through the day with someone else holding his hand…and other body parts by the look of the bruises. They had stood out clear as day on his pale skin; even from where Suguri was positioned at a distance, he could see the boy had been engaging in some pretty raunchy activities. Suguri wasn’t even all that surprised. This is what comes of repressing one's natural inclinations, he thought. He had warned Taki about it when the boy had made his asinine vows, and now here was direct evidence, proof that Suguri had been right. 

Not that being right would do much good. The boy was under a binding contract; Suguri couldn’t just haul Taki’s violated ass back to Japan for a personal indiscretion. He was pitching well and that was the only reason they were in the States in the first place. All he could do was thank the gods that Taki’s parents were both dead. Suguri wouldn’t have known how to face them with this, although he suspected that Taki’s mother would have been more forgiving. She had been quite the wild child herself, a woman of fierce passions, and Taki was so like her in many ways. He might be reserved on the outside, but inside his feelings ran deep and pure. Or not so pure. 

Suguri had stood next to Taki while he declined the dinner invitation. He wanted to speak with Taki as soon as possible, before Taki did something rash out of fear, and sitting through a rowdy meal with the team was simply out of the question. As they walked through the tunnel leading out to the players’ parking lot, Noah had pulled them into a side entrance. 

“Sumimasen, Suguri-san,” Noah had said. “Sore wa watashidatta.” 

Taki had gasped at Noah in surprise, then confusion. 

“It’s alright, Taki-sama,” Noah went on, “This is all my fault.” Noah had turned to Suguri and said, “I can explain everything.” 

They had gone to Blue Ribbon and over a meal of sashimi and sake, Noah had told Suguri that he had been in love with Taki since he had first arrived and been quietly stalking him. He had invited him to his apartment on Sunday morning and told Taki to pretend to go to Klaus’s instead. 

“Why would he do either thing?” was Suguri’s demand. 

“Because I told him I’d kill you if he didn’t. I’m perfectly capable, you know.” 

Suguri gazed into Noah’s ice blue eyes and determined that, yeah, those eyes had zero humanity behind them. Those were a dead man’s eyes. Plus, the guy sang like a robot. Was he human at all? 

“This is preposterous,” Suguri grumbled. “Why the lies?” 

“No lies. I did it. When Taki came over, I confessed my feelings. He turned me down. So I attacked him. I just wanted to let you know that I’m ready to make good on what I did.” Noah casually poured more sake into their cups while Taki sat dumbfounded. 

“Make good on what you did?” This whole situation was so ludicrous, Suguri couldn’t even feel anger, only exasperation. “Are you ready to go to jail for rape? Is that what you’re saying?” 

“Is that what you want me to do?” asked Noah. “Because I’ll confess to the media, to the police, if that’s what you want.” 

Good god. Now Suguri understood that Noah held all the cards. If any of this came out, it would destroy Taki’s own reputation, his entire career in baseball would be over. Could he even go home to Japan after this? 

“I guess that’s a no?” Noah emptied his cup and refilled it again. “My feelings are sincere. I really am in love with Taki, and if he’d be willing to, um, feel the same way about me, then I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it work for both of us. Is that acceptable, Suguri-san?” 

For the first time all night, Suguri noticed that Taki hadn’t said a word. He looked at Taki now and saw that he was utterly flabbergasted. 

“Suguri-san, may I have a word in private with Noah?” Taki murmured. 

Suguri nodded. “Five minutes. I’ll wait for you at the bar.” 

As soon as Suguri was out of earshot, Taki leaned forward and hissed, “What are you doing?” 

Noah smiled back at him. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m getting you and your lover off the hook.” He poured the last of the sake into his cup and drained it. Then he waved the waitress over and handed her his credit card to pay for the meal. 

“He…he’s not…” Is that what Klaus was? His lover? Taki swallowed. 

“Oh? He’s not your lover?” Noah signed the receipt and grabbed his phone. “Then whose handprints are all over your ass? I’m pretty sure Suguri-san would have gotten it right if I hadn’t put him off his scent. Don’t you think?” 

“Why are you doing this?” Taki asked, still as confused as ever. “Why are you helping me?” 

“Because _I’m_ the one who’s your hero. Not him.” He handed Taki his phone. “Put in your number.” 

Taki punched in his data and handed the phone back. Noah sent him a quick text. “There, now you can reach me anytime.” Noah put a hand reassuringly on Taki’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t leave marks on you like that.” He stood up to leave, whispering in Taki’s ear, “All the places I’d touch you, no one would be able to see.”

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chikusho = Damn it  
> Sumimasen = Excuse me  
> Sore wa watashidatta = It was me
> 
>  
> 
> Good god, I think I'm totally losing control of this story.


	18. Chapter 18

 

“Did he really force himself on you?” Suguri asked when they got back to their condo. Noah was a freak, but he knew Taki wasn’t all that innocent either. None of them were. Every man had his own demons, secrets held tightly to one’s breast. Suguri understood this and was willing to look the other way if he could find an excuse to do so. 

“No.” Taki couldn’t look at Suguri. He looked at the floor instead, hoping that Suguri would interpret it as an admission of guilt rather than dishonesty. It was all lie upon lie. “I wanted it. He was just trying to save face for me.” Taki got down on his knees at Suguri’s feet and pressed his forehead to the area rug. He didn’t know what Noah’s real motives were, but he couldn’t in good conscience let him take the blame for his own actions. He had gone to Klaus willingly and Noah had taken the fall for it. Taki had put them all in a bind. “Forgive me, Suguri-san. Father. Please don’t tell my uncle.” 

“Get up,” Suguri ordered sternly. He hated it when Taki called him _otōsan_ , mainly because he _wasn’t_ Taki’s father. Ever since Taki’s real father had died he’d started letting that slip when addressing Suguri. It pained Suguri as much as it elated him to hear Taki say it. At this point, he was grateful that Taki really wasn’t his son, because if he were his own flesh and blood, then he’d have no choice but to kill Noah. Or, rather, have him killed. Suguri had connections back in Tokyo, and those people had connections in Hong Kong, in New York. It would take one phone call to make it happen and his hands would still be clean. What good was that, though, when Taki had already been defiled? Why couldn’t he have just fallen for some pretty girl like any stupid boy? It wouldn’t have even mattered! But those marks on Taki’s body told a whole other story and it didn’t involve any pussy. What could Suguri do to correct this mistake? “Go to sleep, Taki-sama. We’ll discuss this in the morning.” 

Taki stood up and waited for Suguri to retire to his room and close the door; then he covered his mouth with both hands to stifle his sobs. What had he done? He wanted to go to Klaus and feel his arms around him again, bury his face in his chest and breathe him in, look into his golden eyes and know that he was _it_ , he was the one, the love of his life. If his mother were here, what would she tell him? She had pursued the man she _wanted_ over the objections of her parents. Could he do the same, though his own parents were gone from him, could he be as brave, as honest in intent, as she had been? Was Klaus worth losing everything? Was Klaus worth his very own soul? He took his phone out of his pocket and texted Noah: 

 _I’ll do whatever you want_  

He had to protect Klaus at all costs, even if it meant letting Noah have his way. 

*** 

Noah had grinned like a fool all the way home. Taki was so naïve, so inexperienced, and Klaus had done all the dirty work for him. All these weeks Noah had hung back, bided his time, made himself appear harmless, learning Japanese and speaking it horribly so he could make Taki think he was just some idiot trying to impress him. He knew all about being an idiot. Noah had been the quintessential nerd in school, picked on mercilessly by his peers. They had called him ‘Pillsbury doughboy’ and ‘four-eyes’ and said shit about his momma. He had remade himself after high school, wore contacts and grew his hair long, his body doing what he had never been able to do in his head. He had grown tall, shed all his baby fat, his jaw transformed into something square and masculine. Women went mad for him; men wanted to _be_ him. He couldn’t lose. 

He knew Matt was watching him like the asshole he was, but Klaus was a total dope, wearing his heart on his sleeve and unabashedly mooning over Taki. It was too good to be true! He knew Klaus wouldn’t be able to resist such a sweet piece of virgin ass. As much as Noah wanted to have first dibs, he would take sloppy seconds if it meant that Klaus was relegated to No Man’s Land. Noah was counting on Suguri’s inherent dislike of Klaus to work in his own favor. He wasn’t afraid of Suguri. He knew how to handle a man like him. All those years of enduring the cruelty of his schoolmates had made him impervious to fear. He was Thor. He was fucking invincible.

When he saw the text that Taki sent him, he knew he had won. Taki was running for his life and Noah would give him everything he needed—a safe haven, a sympathetic ear, a soothing embrace—because he was also counting on Klaus to be the wolf that he was, ravenous and beholden to nothing but unbridled desire. Noah wasn’t like that. He was coldly rational, intellectual, and the master of his own destiny. He palmed his hardening cock as he lay in bed, thinking carefully before he texted Taki back: 

 _I’m going to save you. Trust me._  

Then he shut his phone off and rolled over, grinding his hips into the sheets, whispering, “ Come to me, Taki. I know you want to.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is short, but it's postseason baseball and I don't have any freaking time in the evenings to write. Sorry! Gotta keep my priorities straight. Aaargh!
> 
> Plus, I thought I had wrapped up a story for another fandom, but then I decided to continue it, so...not enough hours in the day.


	19. Chapter 19

 

On Monday morning, while Klaus was heading out to visit with his sister in New Jersey, Noah had awoken at ten to nine and made himself coffee, toast* and scrambled eggs. He was still renting the luxury two-bedroom apartment he had moved into the year before when Robert Gsellman was his roommate. Gsellman was long gone, but Noah was still there. He planned on taking a trip out to Fort Lee across the Hudson, getting a bowl of miso ramen in the food court of the Korean-owned Japanese grocery store for lunch, then buying some green tea, a package of red bean paste mochi, and a tin of French-style strawberry cream-filled wafer cookies. He wanted to do this right. That meant impressing Suguri along with Taki, because without Suguri on his side, all was lost. Noah was smart, not like Klaus, that clueless rookie. Noah knew how to be patient and pounce when the opportunity was ripe. And Taki was the ripest fruit, a flower just unfolding its petals to the sun, releasing its heady fragrance to the wind. Noah would breathe it all in, press his nose to those silken petals, lose himself in a dream. He would take Taki into his mouth and swallow him whole. 

He texted Taki as he took a bite out of his whole wheat toast: 

im at 460 w42nd #14c. come tues at 11. bring suguri 

Then he made a list of things he wanted to pick up at Russ & Daughters on East Houston: poppy and sesame seed bagels, smoked salmon and whitefish, cream cheese with scallions. He would do that tomorrow morning, the first step on what would hopefully be a very long and fulfilling journey with a beauty from the east. He already knew what he wanted to do to Taki: mess him up and leave him panting for more. But, first, he had to garner Suguri’s trust and respect. The rest would be easy. He hadn’t been president of the chess club in middle school for nothing. Noah knew how to think numerous steps ahead of his opponent, and Klaus was so fucking slow on the uptake. He almost felt sorry for him. 

*** 

When Taki was twelve and his mother was still alive, he had complained to her about his stature. He was always the smallest one in his class and he was sick of it. The private school he attended was full of rich kids like himself and his classmates were relentless and brutal in their teasing, even though he could still put much larger boys on their asses during kendo practice. Next year he would be attending a co-ed school and that meant _girls_. Girls liked boys that were tall, not shrimpy and scrawny, as he told her one night when she tucked him into bed. 

“You’re not shrimpy and scrawny,” his mother had assured him. Like all Japanese mothers, her head was up in the clouds when it came to her firstborn son. He could do no wrong in her eyes; she thought he was perfect. “You’re like a diamond, a jewel. Small and precious—” 

“I don’t want to be that!” Taki had insisted. “I want to be big and tall. Father is tall. How come I’m not?” Even his younger sister Yura was as tall as him. 

She had sighed, stifling a laugh. “Boys are slower than girls…in everything. Let me tell you a story my own mother had told me when I was young and ignorant.” 

His mother had then recounted a tale about a frog trapped at the bottom of a deep well. This frog had gazed up at the sky, seeing only the very tiny portion visible to it, thinking that what it saw encompassed the entire universe. Taki had thought the story was silly at the time; he didn’t really understand what it meant or why his mother had told it to him. In three months, she would be gone from him, and he had never thought of that story until now; he understood its meaning but only after it was too late to undo what had been done: he had allowed his vision to be distorted by the narrow confines of his own stupidity, by thoughtless action, he had followed the desire in front of him like it was the only thing that existed in the world and had been utterly blind to the consequences. 

Once again he was lying in bed at night, but it wasn’t his parents sleeping in the next room. It was Suguri. And he wasn’t a child anymore; he was twenty, but even more foolish than he was at twelve. Taki wiped at his face, hot tears wetting the hair about his ears and dripping onto his pillow as he stared up at the ceiling in the dark. A siren wailed in the distance, getting louder as it approached and then fading again. He wished his problems would do the same: fade away into nothingness. What would he say to Suguri in the morning? What would Suguri ask? Did he even need to ask anything at all? The man had seen him in the shower, bruises and handprints tattooed all over him. He hadn’t just broken a vow; that was pardonable and Suguri had thought them ridiculous anyway. It was the other thing, the fact that he had clearly been with a man, and the man who had admitted to the criminal act wasn’t even…Klaus. It had been Noah. What the hell would he do about Noah? What kind of blackmail scheme did Thor have up his sleeve? Could he even tell Klaus without Klaus getting into a brawl with Noah like he had with Matt? Their manager Terry Collins would never put up with that, with any of it! They would all get suspended or worse. Klaus was a big man, but Noah was even bigger and, pound for pound, they were more than evenly matched in size and testosterone-fueled territorial insanity. 

It was well after two when he finally dozed off, only to be awoken by his phone dinging on the nightstand. Taki opened his eyes to sunlight and when he looked at his phone he saw that it was almost half past nine in the morning. Suguri had let him sleep him. Perhaps Suguri was dreading the conversation they would have as much as he did. Taki rubbed his eyes and opened the text. It was from Noah inviting both him and Suguri to lunch at his apartment tomorrow. What the hell? He wanted him to bring Suguri? But he had told Noah that he would do whatever he wanted to keep him from spilling the beans about Klaus so…what choice did he have? He jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. He wanted to get the interrogation over with as soon as possible, just rip that bandage off with one swift yank. 

Suguri greeted Taki in the kitchen, where he was preparing a traditional breakfast: Japanese-style scrambled eggs flavored with soy and mirin, cooked crepe-thin, then rolled and sliced into pinwheels; pan-seared salmon flavored with soy; miso soup; pickled radishes; a small dish of natto; rice. It all made Taki’s stomach grumble with hunger despite his anxiety.

“I’ll set the table,” Taki offered. 

Suguri turned from the stove and nodded, “Very good,” as if nothing were out of the ordinary. 

They sat down to breakfast and all Suguri wanted to talk about was this sports journalist he had hooked up with recently, Aikawa-san. Taki was confused and then nervous. Was this Suguri’s way of torturing him, punishing him, for what he had done? Did he learn this technique from his yakuza friends? Finally, after they had finished the meal and no mention had been made about what had transpired the day before, Taki broke down. He couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Suguri-san,” he stammered, “don’t you want to ask me about…um…Noah? That is…what I did with him?” 

Suguri sipped his tea and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the napkin, then folded it neatly on the table. “You are a man now, Taki-sama, and you are free to make your own choices in life, to an extent, of course. In a year your uncle will select a suitable wife for you, you will marry, have children of your own. Between now and then, well, I am here to keep you safe, to guide you if you want my guidance. Don’t lose sight of why you are here in the U.S. You’ve loved baseball your whole life. You’ve pursued it with your whole heart. Don’t forget what it is that you truly want. And don’t get burned.” 

Great. Taki stared into his lap, guilt washing over him like the waves of the ocean hitting the shore. He loved baseball, didn’t want to give it up. But he wanted Klaus as much and didn’t want to give _him_ up. Could he have both? Was he being too greedy and would his gods punish him for it? Or would he immolate himself like a moth to the flame? 

“Noah has invited us to lunch tomorrow,” Taki said finally. “What should I tell him?” 

Suguri stood and started clearing the table. “If you wish to go, then go. I’m having lunch with Aikawa-san, though. It’s her birthday and I’m treating her.” 

“Oh.” Taki followed him into the kitchen with the dirty dishes. “That’s going kind of fast, isn’t it, Suguri-san? I mean, you only just met her, and now you’re celebrating her birthday with her and…” 

“And what? Sometimes you have to strike when the iron is hot.” 

“Uh…yes…” What the hell? What was Suguri doing? Why wasn’t he stopping him from seeing Noah? It wasn’t like Suguri to let an affair with a woman take over his life, interfere with his responsibilities. Besides, the man was married, or hadn’t he told Aikawa-san? “Does Aikawa-san know you have a wife in Japan?” he dared to ask. 

“Oh, yes, she knows I’m married,” Suguri stated without rancor as he loaded up the dishwasher. “She’s married, too. So, we’re even.” Suguri gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window and smiled. “The weather is nice. Let’s walk the High Line, then go to the Whitney. There’s a Murakami** retrospective I’d like to see.” 

Taki slumped against the kitchen counter. He felt like he didn’t know anything anymore. The more the scales fell from his eyes, the less he comprehended. 

“I-I’m going to take a shower,” he mumbled. In the bathroom, he looked at himself in the mirror, cringing at first with shame at the angry red marks on his body. What a mess! But then he remembered the silken touch of Klaus's tongue on his skin, on his cock, his mouth so wet and hot as he sucked on his earlobe, on his neck, his thighs. It was all so good, and he wanted more, more, more. Nothing had really crumbled to ruin yet. Suguri didn't even know that it was Klaus who had marked him as his own. Something inside him was itching to push it all to the limit and then over the cliff, something in his blood. Before he stepped into the shower stall, he texted Noah back: 

i will be there

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I think I read somewhere that Noah keeps his diet gluten-free. But this is fiction, so he’s eating it.
> 
> **I’m referring to Takashi Murakami, the artist, not Haruki Murakami, the author, although I like both of them.
> 
> I've got half of the next chapter written. Should be able to post in the next day or two. Thanks for reading!


	20. Chapter 20

 

When Taki walked into the clubhouse at one-thirty on Tuesday, Klaus was ready with the scouting reports. He assumed Suguri would be glued to Taki’s side, so the binders were already in Klaus’s hands as a means of defense, as a way of showing Suguri that he was Taki’s catcher and teammate and nothing else. Klaus knew exactly which pitch sequence to call for when Nolan Arenado, the Rockies’ star third baseman, stepped up to the plate. Klaus would do all the heavy lifting so that Taki could shine, as he should, prove that Taki was in good hands with him. But it wasn’t Suguri who walked in beside Taki; it was Noah, and the blond bastard had his arm around Taki’s shoulders like they were freaking best bros. Klaus’s brow furrowed in confusion. What the hell was Thor doing? Taki had never been on such informal physical terms with anyone in the clubhouse and Noah was practically draping himself over Taki like a second skin. What made it all the more unbelievable was the sight of Taki smiling back at Noah. Smiling! When had Taki ever smiled like that? And, yet, Noah was saying something amusing apparently because Taki looked up at Noah and said something back, something private, and Noah laughed and patted Taki on the _ass_ before Taki turned to drop his bag into his locker. 

Matt’s locker was located in between Noah’s and Taki’s, but Matt wasn’t at his locker getting changed into his dry fits. He was still in his street clothes, hungover from yet another bender, nursing a cup of black coffee as he hid out in the weight room. From where he was sitting at the bench press chewing on three aspirins, he had an unobstructed view out the doorway into the locker room and he could see Noah and Taki exchanging flirtatious glances while they undressed. 

“In-ter-est-ing,” Matt drawled under his breath. Even more interesting was watching Klaus standing in the hallway spying on them from behind the vending machines. Klaus’s back was to Matt, but he didn’t need to see Klaus’s face to know what kind of expression the man was wearing. The way Klaus was gripping those binders, knuckles white and fingers digging into the hard plastic covers like they were made of butter, told Matt everything he needed to know. His skull-splitting headache disappeared as a surge of adrenalin coursed through his veins. Matt had already been on the receiving end of Klaus’s temper on Sunday night and he couldn’t wait to see what would happen to Noah for moving in on Klaus’s territory. Those two idiots were fighting over the same juicy little rabbit. 

Klaus couldn’t make out what either of them was saying, but he knew one thing: Noah was marked for death if he tried anything even remotely intimate with Taki. Then the roar of blood in his ears made it impossible for Klaus to hear anything at all. He couldn’t even string together one coherent thought, he was so ready to lash out. It took Matt coming up behind him and giving him a curious look for Klaus to finally rouse himself from his seething paralysis. Their eyes met briefly. 

“Someone’s gonna fucking die,” Klaus growled deep in his chest. 

“Oh yeah?” Matt’s eyebrows quirked up with feigned shock. “I’ll make sure to get front row seats then.” 

Klaus shouldered past him, his size fifteen feet pounding the floor like he wanted to stomp his way to China, as furious and wounded as a bull in the ring, bloodied and speared, refusing to go down on its knees. 

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Matt whispered to himself with a sly smile. He watched Klaus disappear down the hallway and then he turned and walked the other way, towards the locker room, and began whistling. 

God have mercy! Klaus recognized the tune Matt was whistling as the sounds echoed loudly off the hard concrete surfaces: _Wind Beneath My Wings_. He couldn’t bear to hear it, couldn’t bear to think about the duet he had sung with Taki, the way Taki had sounded, the way Taki had looked at him when he sang, “Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?” 

Klaus made his way through the warren of tunnels and up the stairs and into the dugout, then out onto the field, gulping in stuttering breaths of air. He had a game to catch in a few hours, scouting reports to go over with Taki, and Taki was in the locker room letting that Nordic asshole touch him and make him smile. Why was everything suddenly upside down? He stood on the dirt in front of the dugout, taking in the blue sky; seagulls were circling above center field, calling to each other. He consoled himself with the fact that he was still alive, Suguri hadn’t killed him yet, and that meant that things could still be fixed. He watched Asdrubel Cabrera taking swings in the batting cage, some of the Rockies players starting to bring their gear into the visitor’s dugout, and huffed out a determined breath. 

For fuck’s sake, Klaus told himself, it’s time to man up. One second later, he lost his balls when he saw Suguri leaning against the short wall by the dugout talking to a young woman from the Japanese media. Shit. But Suguri only nodded at him and went back to chatting up the woman. Klaus put his head down and walked back into the dugout, sat on the bench and waited for Taki to come out. After that, he didn’t know what he’d do. 

*** 

It wasn’t an act of betrayal. Okay, going to Noah’s apartment was borderline betrayal, but Taki was only trying to throw a bucket of water on a fire that was threatening to burn out of control. When he showed up at Noah’s apartment on Tuesday late morning, he was ready with his prepared speech. 

“Noah,” Taki recited, “I appreciate what you told Suguri-san, but I’m responsible for my own actions. You don’t need to do this. You don’t need to lie for me anymore. I can work this out on my own, thank you very much.” Good, that should do it, thought Taki. Now I can go back to bedding Klaus. 

Noah had looked blankly at him and said, “Let’s eat,” as if he hadn’t heard a word. He was thrown off, stunned even, by the fact that Suguri hadn’t come along. Noah had counted on Suguri following Taki like a shadow. He wanted to show Suguri that he was a gentleman and capable of treating Taki with good manners and consideration. Now he would have to proceed with Step 2 without the benefit of Suguri's presence. 

Step 2 involved taking Taki down to his building’s karaoke room* after lunch. There was no one there as Noah powered up the sound system and monitor, Taki gazing about with a worried look on his face. He had politely eaten the smoked salmon and bagels and drank the green tea, sampled the mochi and wafer cookies. But this was just plain weird. 

Noah stepped up to the low platform at the front of the room—what served as the stage—while Taki took a seat on one of the many plush lounge chairs and waited for what could only be another atrocious vocal performance from Thor. It was probably a good thing that Suguri hadn’t come along. He would have lost his lunch. 

Some kind of flute-like melody leaked from the speakers as Noah flipped another switch; the lights dimmed and a device on the ceiling began projecting swirling colors and stars onto the walls. It was like an acid trip in the middle of the day. Noah started warbling as only he could:

 

_Every night in my dreams_

_I see you, I feeeel you_

_That is how I know you_

_Go ooooonnn_

 

In seconds, Taki had to swallow the lump in his throat. He had never seen the movie _Titanic_ , but he had heard this song overly-emoted in karaoke clubs in Tokyo too many times to count. Almost no one could sing it well—even Suguri had difficulty with it—but it was always sung with the most heartfelt passion, and the lyrics had always made Taki cry. 

Noah droned on:

 

_Love can touch us one time_

_And last for a liiiiifetime_

_And never let go till we’re goooone_

 

Taki’s heart throbbed with longing and sorrow. To have known a love like that, and then to lose it…could there be any greater tragedy in life? In that moment, Taki felt as if he could embrace the entire world, a world that had Klaus at its center—shining bright like the sun—but with room enough to hold another celestial body, an equally golden star, a solar system that held two suns. Noah was offering his warmth, his constancy, his aid, and Taki wouldn’t turn him away; he would accept his help with gratitude. He could be Noah’s friend, even as he made Klaus his lover. Lover. Hero. Soulmate. Yes, he liked the sound of that. 

*** 

So it was with high spirits that Taki sprinted up the stairs into the dugout. Klaus always waited for him on the bench on the days when he pitched. He was eager to talk to him, assure him that Suguri wasn’t on to them. They were safe because Noah was willing to run interference for them. Noah had submissively kissed the back of his hand before they left for the stadium and made no move to attempt anything unseemly. Thor wasn’t trying to get into his pants after all. The poor guy was only trying to share his most unfortunate love of karaoke with him. Taki had breathed a sigh of relief. Noah would be his shield, his ally; he would be the means to an end. Then Taki saw Klaus’s expression and everything he was going to say died in his throat. Klaus looked like he was ready to punch a wall. 

“What’s wrong?” Taki asked. 

“Is Noah your new _BFF_?” Klaus snapped in reply, the letters ‘BFF’ spat out with venom. 

“BFF? What is—?” 

“Forget it.” Klaus flipped open a binder and scowled into it. He wanted to kill Noah, put his hands around his stupid neck and choke him to death. But it was Taki sitting next to him and Klaus was so hurt and enraged by what he had seen. How could Taki have let Thor touch him? “Don’t you know?” Klaus choked out. 

“Klaus…” Taki’s voice was barely a whisper, so soft and heartbroken, his eyes wide with apprehension. 

All Klaus could do was stare at the blurry page in his lap. He gulped in a breath. “I saw the two of you…he had his arm around you...you _let_ him!" 

Taki’s mouth dropped open. “That’s…Klaus…it’s not what you think…” 

“I said forget it, okay?” 

“Klaus!” Taki reached over and gripped Klaus by the forearm. 

Klaus jerked his arm away and said through gritted teeth, “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

*** 

Needless to say, the Mets were getting thrashed by the Rockies from the first pitch on. Taki had nothing on his curveball—it was just hanging up there like a pair of dirty underwear for everyone to see—and his slider was missing so badly, even Klaus couldn't block the errant balls. Dan Warthen made four trips to the mound by the top of the third inning, and during that fourth visit, Klaus exploded.

"Okay, best biscuits and gravy," Dan was asking the guys, "Cracker Barrel or iHop?"

Cabrera, Reyes, and Smith all insisted that iHop had the best while Taki just stood there dejected and uncomprehending. He'd never been to either restaurant, nor had he ever sampled biscuits and gravy. Klaus made the mistake of meeting Taki's eyes. He looked like he was going to cry and Suguri was likely scrutinizing the two of them and shaking his head in disgust.

"See how that idiot can't even call a decent game?" Suguri was probably saying to his Japanese lady friend. "The Mets need to give Taki-sama a different catcher, one who knows how to do his job!"

This was running through Klaus's mind and boiling his blood as his teammates stood waiting for him to put in his two-cents. The whole night was shot to shit, it really was, and Klaus couldn't stand to lose this way. He couldn't stand to lose, period. But even worse, he knew he was useless to Taki like this, feeling sorry for himself and unable to rein in his anger; he had to take control of the situation. So he put his hands on his hips and grunted unapologetically, "Cracker Barrel," even though he knew iHop was indeed better for the sole reason that many of them were open 24/7 and, thus, one of the few places to go to at four in the morning after a night of wild partying. When the rest of the guys started protesting, Klaus threw his mitt down on the ground and went all Billy Martin-Lou Pinella-Tommy Lasorda crazy on them, kicking the dirt and swearing a blue streak. Taki's shocked expression, though, was pure gold. There was nothing like getting a face full of testosterone to bring one back to reality, and the reality that Klaus wanted to impress upon Taki was: you are  _mine_.

Klaus jabbed a finger at Taki's chest and ordered, "Just do what I say, Chibitan! You got that?"

Taki nodded and turned to face the outfield as the home plate umpire wandered over to break up the meeting on the mound. He didn't want Klaus to see the smile that had crept onto his lips, and the flush of pink that was surely spreading up his neck and onto his cheeks. His heart was thumping wildly with excitement, not from the prospect of getting his pitches back in order—that was a given at this point—but from hearing the low rumble of Klaus's voice, that commanding tone putting him in his place. He couldn't wait, couldn't wait for Klaus to use that tone of voice on him in bed. Taki calmly adjusted his cap, turned towards home plate, set his feet, and looked straight into Klaus's crotch for the sign, smile gone, but heart aloft.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Noah’s building at 460 West 42nd Street in Midtown, known as Manhattan View, really does have a karaoke room, among many other amenities. Two-bedroom apartments there start at $2.95 million, so there better be amenities.
> 
> I have Taki living in the Zaha Hadid-designed building at 520 West 28th Street in Chelsea, and those units start at a whopping $4.895 million, so...Noah's got some catching up to do.
> 
> Klaus, poor guy, isn't even living in Manhattan. He's renting a shitty studio in Flushing, Queens.
> 
> FULL DISCLOSURE: The song that Noah sings in this chapter is My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, but I need to give credit to Matt Mulholland's spectacular recorder rendition of My Heart Will Go On (you can watch it on YouTube and you WILL pee your pants) as the inspiration behind Noah's performance in this chapter. If any of you know who jazz vocalist Kurt Elling is, well, I would deem Mulholland right up there in off-key mayhem. Mulholland is refreshingly funny, though; Elling is decidedly NOT.
> 
>  


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War

 

After the third inning, it was like a whole new ballgame. Taki found the strike zone, working both sides of the plate at will. From Suguri’s vantage point on the couch in the media room watching the game unfold on the television, it was obvious that both catcher and pitcher were now in sync, and it was a beautiful sight to behold. Not that Suguri was willing to forgive Klaus for a gesture as rude as poking his finger into Taki’s chest, but whatever the big oaf had said to Taki had clearly gotten him back on track. So. Whatever. Klaus was still at the top of Suguri’s shit list because Suguri was nobody’s fool. He could track the location of Taki’s phone via GPS on his own phone, so he _knew_ without a doubt that Taki had gone to Klaus’s apartment on Sunday morning and _not_ to Noah’s; and when he saw the marks on Taki’s body hours later in the shower room, he knew that it was Klaus who had taken Taki’s virginity. They had _all_ lied and Suguri wasn’t about to let on that he knew that for a fucking _fact_. 

Suguri had decided to play dumb over dinner at Blue Ribbon for a reason. He wanted to know why Noah was pretending to throw himself under the bus, and if his ultimate goal was to ruin Taki’s reputation. Throughout his career, Suguri had stitched up more than his share of yakuza thugs at all hours of the night, and there was nothing like a shot of morphine followed by a shot of bourbon to loosen one’s lips. Yakuza, especially the more seasoned veterans, loved to talk strategy and one-upmanship after a satisfying gunfight, probably because disagreements were settled diplomatically more and more and drawing actual blood was a rare treat. A bullet through the bicep was to be savored and recounted like a myth of epic proportions. 

“Never let your enemy know you’re coming,” they would declare as they admired their newly bandaged wounds, shot glass slammed onto the table. “Surprise is half the battle.” And, “Nothing lulls the senses like the illusion of safety.” 

Suguri was pretty sure they were trying to quote Sun Tzu in their own way, not that he needed them to tell him how to win a battle; he could recite _The Art of War_ from memory the same way the ancient Greeks could sing by heart the lines from Homer’s _Iliad_. Suguri had listened and learned from the ones who had lasted the longest, and he had come to the conclusion that the best executioner was a patient one, one who let his enemy’s own rashness and arrogance do the job for him. He would give both Noah and Klaus enough rope for them to hang themselves. Klaus would likely break first. The man was too direct to be a good liar. But Noah was in a different class—he played his cards close to the vest—and his motives were questionable to say the least. Suguri had let Taki go alone to Noah’s for lunch earlier in the day, even though he could have insisted otherwise. That Noah had the balls to invite them to a meal after he had falsely claimed to have bedded Taki was just too fucking incredible. Thor was playing him as if he thought Suguri was born yesterday, and Suguri was going to let that overly-confident bastard believe that it was so. Watching him digging his own grave was going to be highly entertaining. 

*** 

Matt flopped down next to Suguri on the couch during the seventh inning stretch. He had gone into the clubhouse—supposedly to take a piss, but really to down a Black Beauty*—and seen Suguri watching the game on the monitor. “So, are you gonna help them or not?” 

“Who?” replied Suguri. 

“Oh, c’mon. We both know that Wolfstadt is nailing little Strawberry Shortcake and that Noah is trying to—” 

Suguri interrupted with a loud clearing of his throat. “Kindly refrain from calling him that. The proper address is ‘Taki-sama.’ _Baka_.” 

“Right. Fine. Taki- _sama_.” 

“It’s no wonder everyone hates you,” Suguri countered. 

Matt turned to look at him. Suguri had his eyes glued to the screen as Klaus took a few warm-up swings on deck in the batting circle. He would be leading off at the bottom of the inning. “Whatever,” Matt said. “I don’t give a shit what people think about me.” 

Suguri smiled despite himself. They were all being dishonest—Taki, Noah, Klaus—only Matt didn’t bother to lie. Suguri could respect that. He liked Matt for his undisguised insolence, his devil-may-care attitude. “We should play poker sometime,” Suguri suggested. “You look like a betting man.” 

“Name the time and place, old geezer,” smirked Matt. “I’m in.” Then he grabbed a bottle of water and returned to the dugout before anyone could accuse him of leaving the game early. He didn’t have to pitch until Thursday, and after that there was the All-Star break when he would finally get a respite from seeing Thor’s irritating face. Tonight he would go out drinking after the game, fuck some trashed young lady, then go back to his apartment and map out his strategy. Klaus had given him the worst blowjob of his life, but he was still going to do everything in his power to help him out. “Yeah, you rabid dog,” Matt chuckled under his breath as he walked back up the stairs into the dugout, “I’m going to be your fucking hero.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Black Beauties are just one of numerous pill forms of amphetamine (uppers).
> 
> Baka = idiot, moron, ass…you get the picture.
> 
> This is a really short chapter, but I wanted to post this before I get back to work for another fandom.


	22. Chapter 22

Terry Collins decided to pull Taki with one out in the seventh inning. There was one runner on and his pitch count was at one hundred five. Taki didn’t throw hard, not like Noah, but he was small and deceptively frail in appearance and Terry didn’t want him coming apart at the seams before half the season was over. He consulted with Warthen after Nolan Arenado flailed his bat and connected with a low slider on the outside of the plate, poking it into right field for a single. 

“One more?” Terry asked his pitching coach. 

Dan Warthen bobbed his head a few times. “Yeah, why the hell not?” 

Then DJ LeMahieu laced a breaking ball into left center for another single. That was the end of the night for Taki, but he had kept the Mets in the game. They were only trailing by two runs despite the disastrous early innings. As Terry came out of the dugout to make the pitching change with the home plate umpire, Klaus trotted to the mound and slapped the back of his glove across Taki’s chest. “Good work,” he barked. 

The look of disappointment on Taki’s face was hilarious. Klaus was unable to hold back the world’s cockiest grin, so he figured he’d just run with it. He pushed his mask up over his helmet, bent low and muttered, “It’s not like I can kiss you right here on the mound, can I?” 

Taki’s mouth opened in a fit of wordless displeasure. Then he clamped his jaws shut, his face turning red as a beet, and left the mound as soon as Terry took the ball from him. Taki was fuming. _Good work_. Was that it? His mind was stuck on that appallingly lukewarm assessment. Shouldn’t Klaus have said something along the lines of “You were amazeballs!” or “How may I worship you, my master?” or “My dick is so hard for you!” Taki was the pitcher, Klaus his catcher. Taki was the one in control. Or was he? His gut was roiling with indignation and wounded pride and something bordering on neediness as he sat down on the bench, his glove still on his left hand. While the trainer wrapped his right arm in an ice pack and towel, Taki watched, sulking, as Klaus chatted with Terry on the mound. Hansel Robles was making his way from the bullpen to Marc Antony’s _Vivir Mi Vida_ blasted from the stadium speakers. Noah settled in next to Taki when the trainer left. Now that Taki was done pitching for the night, it was acceptable to approach him. One by one, the players in the dugout walked up to Taki and congratulated him. Even Matt clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Great job, Shortcake. Someone’s earned a second helping of dessert tonight.” He winked at Taki, enjoying the look of utter confusion on Taki’s flushed face. Even better was the glare he received from Thor. 

“I think that Wolfstadt might have a sweet tooth,” Matt said to Noah. “In fact, he was hanging around the candy machine when you came in today. You should have seen the way he tore into that bag of Skittles. You’d think he was out for blood and not just sugar.” Then Matt walked away, whistling. 

Noah wasn’t about to be cockblocked by Matt. Not on his life. He turned to Taki and spoke in his usual steady voice, “Matt has issues. He was probably an unwanted child so he makes up stories. Those types always do.” He took a sip of water from his plastic bottle and continued, his expression as unchanging as ever, “When I first came here, he had a huge crush on me. I turned him down, of course, and he’s never forgiven me. I feel sorry for him. He’s going to die a lonely, bitter man.” Noah glanced over and caught Taki staring back at him, his eyes wide with shock. The temptation was there and so strong, had they had any privacy at all, Noah would have carved his own body into Taki, erased every mark Klaus had put on him with his own, like one alpha claims another alpha’s territory. But they were in public and Noah was glad for it. He wanted to draw it out—the hunt, the pursuit—and let the hunger grow and deepen. The longer the wait, the stronger the ache. What was pleasure without pain? This was going to be so satisfying, Noah thought, to steal away this lovely boy right from under Klaus’s nose. No, right _in front_ of his nose, where Klaus could see it all happening and be helpless to stop it. Yes. Noah had seen Taki first, way back in spring training, but he had been too shy to speak to him then. When he realized that Klaus had pounced first, he knew he couldn’t sit back idly anymore. He wasn’t going to let some rookie catcher take what was rightfully his. 

*** 

When Noah had first arrived in New York after the trade with the Toronto Blue Jays, Matt had welcomed him just like everyone else. He had even taken Noah out to dinner, shown him around town, because Matt _owned_ New York. He could afford to be magnanimous. He was the Dark Knight and everyone loved him. Then things changed all too quickly after his injuries and rehab stints. Matt’s performance on the mound began to pale against Noah’s 100+ mph fastball. Noah was demolishing every batter at the plate and before you knew it, the fans were calling Noah ‘Thor’ and ‘Synderella’ and they were no longer chanting for the Dark Knight to save them. He felt utterly betrayed, not so much by the fans because fans were fickle, but by Noah, who had eagerly accepted Matt’s friendship and then tossed it away when he realized he didn’t need it to open his own doors. Nobody treats the Dark Knight like a freaking doormat, though, even if he was no longer welcome in New York. 

He had watched Noah’s reaction when Taki arrived at the beginning of the season. The kid was barely twenty, almost three years younger than Noah was when he had made his major league debut with the Mets in 2015, but team management had considered Taki to be good enough to replace Jacob deGrom for the season, and that made him a threat to everyone’s ego. Noah had been reserved and standoffish at first, but that changed when Taki started winning games and developed a good rapport with Klaus on the field. This seemed to pique Noah’s interest. At team meals Noah would quietly seat himself next to Taki, smile at him; then he started taking those ridiculous language lessons and speaking garbled Japanese at him and bringing him weird strawberry flavored drinks. He called him Taki-sama; it was nauseating. Was this Noah’s way of crushing on Taki? The kid was admittedly cute, lovely like a girl almost if that was your thing, but Matt didn’t think Noah would be stupid enough to ignore the fact that Reizen had a middle-aged thug watching over his tiny body. 

Then Matt saw the way Taki and Klaus were practically flirting after the game on Sunday in the locker room and he couldn’t resist poking some fun. He was just being his usual asshole self and pushing buttons for a harmless laugh, just to irritate Wolfstadt, but when Klaus started swinging his fists, he realized to his great surprise that the flirtation was real. And then there were those marks all over Taki’s body in the shower…holy shit. He knew Klaus was doomed; Suguri was going to skin him alive for violating his precious charge. Matt actually felt a little sorry for Klaus—the dude was dumb as a doornail for acting the way he did—and his feelings might not have moved beyond simple pity had he not seen Noah get into the car with Suguri and Taki that night. Matt saw it for what it was instantly. Thor couldn’t even wait a few days to make his move, couldn’t wait for Klaus’s corpse to cool first before pouncing on his prey. Greedy motherfucker. Well, Matt wasn’t going to wait either, not after seeing what played out earlier today in the locker room. Noah wasn’t the only one interested in being an uninvited hero. 

*** 

Klaus ended the night with another home run and he took it once more as a sign: sexy times were right around the corner. The last time he had hit a home run, two in fact, was the day Taki had spread himself out like a twenty-course buffet, and Klaus couldn’t wait to gorge himself again, even if he had to punch his way past Noah, past Suguri. The last few days had been a roller coaster ride of joy, horror, and disbelief and he wasn’t any closer to understanding any of it beyond his own caveman instincts: I want, I need, I crave, I must make him mine. Klaus had wanted various things very badly in the past—that girl, that car, that line, that drink, that call-up to the big leagues—but none of those desires had ever made him feel like he was losing his mind. Claudia didn’t exactly trust him to make the smartest life choices; she knew all about his ‘recreational’ habits—speed or coke chased by alcohol or ‘ludes to take the edge off, cigarettes, pot, hash, sex with strangers—all of it to fill some mysterious, voracious hunger. What he did during his time in Vegas he’d answer to God for if he made it to Heaven, or to the Devil when he was sent to Hell, but none of it came close to this current madness because none of it had involved the heart, that thing beating bloody and true inside his chest. When he looked at Taki, thought of him, his heart veritably _ached_ , and he knew he’d throw his life away for him. That was probably a very bad thing, whether that made him a fool or a saint. At least his mind, during saner moments, told him so. But his mind was getting trampled by his heart, and there was no escaping that distant memory of a boy and a scent so beautiful it had left a gaping hole inside him that he had been unable to fill—not with drink or drugs or anonymous lovers—until now. Taki would fill him up and Klaus would devour him whole if that’s what it took to make him complete, to turn that almost forgotten dream into a reality. 

And so his desperation made Klaus brave, even reckless. The Mets had eked out a 7-6 win and as the players filed into the clubhouse from the dugout, chatty and chirping, Klaus lingered for a moment at the cooler. As always, Taki had stayed on the bench for the entirety of the game. Klaus wouldn’t look at Noah, who was walking right behind Taki; he kept his eyes trained on Taki instead and Taki understood enough to step aside and let Noah pass. Klaus smiled down at Taki, a silent thanks. He hoped Noah saw it and felt it like a left hook to the jaw. 

As soon as they were alone in the dugout, Taki whispered, “He doesn’t know.” 

“Who?” asked Klaus. 

“Suguri-san. He doesn’t know about us.” 

Klaus stood bolt upright in surprise. “But…he saw you in the shower and the way he looked at me—” 

“Noah said he did it.” Taki stared down at his feet, overcome with guilt for just a brief moment. When he looked back up at Klaus’s startled face, though, his pupils were blown wide with longing. “He told Suguri-san it was him who…did those things.” 

“But—” 

“Tomorrow,” Taki interrupted. “I’ll come to you. I’ll make an excuse. I’ll come to you. Do you still want me?” 

Klaus just stared, speechless. 

“It’s simple, isn’t it?” Taki said quietly. “You just have to make me yours.” 

Then they both walked down the stairs into the clubhouse as if no words had been exchanged. Who needs words? Hadn’t they known each other for years?

 


	23. Chapter 23

_hey sis. i need your help. call me_  

Klaus shoved his phone back into his cargo shorts after he texted Claudia and loaded the dirty bed linens into the washing machine in the basement of his apartment building. It was five-thirty in the morning and he’d been awake since four, unable to sleep because he was too giddy with excitement. He sat down on the rickety wooden chair next to the folding table and cracked open the paperback novel that had been left behind by another tenant. The illustration on the tattered cover showed a buxom, red-haired woman wearing a billowy, low-cut blouse that accentuated her generous cleavage as she swooned in the arms of a shirtless, ripped dude with long, wavy, windswept golden locks. His ridiculous eye patch and tight black leather pants gave him the appearance of a muscular pirate who had spent long hours at the gym; all he needed was a parrot on his shoulder for the full effect. Okay. Klaus knew he was in for a saucy romance featuring rum smuggling and juices flowing from every orifice. He flipped through the stained pages looking for the good bits. That was easy enough: all the smutty parts were dog-eared already. 

“ _Her quivering loins blossomed under his heated touch, her bosom heaving as his throbbing manhood leapt in solemn communion_ …” 

Klaus doubled over laughing as he read the passage aloud under the fluorescent lights of the laundry room. 

“Holy fuck,” he groaned in hysterics, “who writes this shit?” 

And then he sat up straight in deep contemplation. Dang. If he were honest, he’d have to admit that his own throbbing manhood had leapt in solemn communion whenever he thought of Taki. He quickly thumbed through the novel, the rhythmic slosh-slosh of the washing machine serenading him as he read through one hilarious passage after another. Only, he wasn’t laughing anymore. He was looking for pointers on how to please a partner in amazing pseudo-historical porn fiction fashion. Taki had said he would find a way to see him today and that meant two things: he better have clean sheets ready and he needed to figure out a way to satisfy Taki’s voracious carnal appetite, newly unleashed and seemingly bottomless. A twenty-year-old horny man-child was going to be a monumental challenge, even for a seasoned sex fiend like Klaus. God help him. 

*** 

Taki wasn’t relying on any god to ensure satisfaction, though. No, he was taking matters into his own hand considering the fact that Klaus had left him wanting for more the first time around. That morning, Taki waited for Suguri to go out for fresh pastries at La Bergamote before letting himself into Suguri’s bedroom. Taki pulled out the top right hand drawer of his dresser and found the ebony box containing Suguri’s stash of goodies; the blue diamond-shaped pills were easily recognizable and Suguri had never kept them a secret. He had even told Taki that Viagra was ‘man’s best friend’ a few nights ago, openly downing a pill before he went to meet Aikawa-san for drinks and sexytimes. 

“A boy like you would have no need for it,” Suguri had told him as he lightly patted his face with some increasingly rare Kenzo Power* cologne. “A man my age, though…young women are exceedingly hungry and older women expect a skillful lover. Either way, one needs stamina. Without stamina and skill, you’ll be guaranteed to disappoint your paramour.” 

Taki had nodded and made a mental note of where Suguri kept the pills. There were all sorts of drugs in the box, all in unmarked containers, some legal, some illicit, Suguri had access to everything: painkillers, coke, pot, hash, amphetamines, barbiturates, opiates, hallucinogens. Some of the drugs were for pure recreational use, some for legitimate medical purposes, and some for what Suguri deemed ‘spiritual’ enlightenment. That’s where the LSD came in to play, Taki supposed. He opened the bottle and put one blue pill in his pocket, grateful that the pills weren’t in a blister pack where Suguri might notice that one had gone missing. 

Then Taki went into the kitchen to fill the electric hot water kettle and grind the coffee beans. It wasn’t easy pushing the guilt out of his mind. He had taken something from Suguri without his permission and that was stealing, no way around that. But his desire to be with Klaus and satiate his hunger trumped the guilt. Would Suguri understand this if he found out? The man was actively caving in to his own desires, too. The only difference was he wasn’t stealing anything from Taki. Crap. Taki heard the door open. Suguri was back with the croissants and that meant Taki was going to add lying, as well as stealing, to his growing list of transgressions. Oh, wait. He’d already been lying, so… 

“I’m going to go shopping later this morning,” Taki said. “Yura’s birthday is coming up and I want to find something special for her.” He nibbled on a strawberry cream filled croissant, convincing himself that he was only telling a partial fib. Her birthday was next month and he did plan on shopping for a gift, just not today. He let his hair fall into his face as he organized the flaky crumbs on his plate into a pyramid shape. Suguri’s abrupt throat clearing forced him to look up at his guardian. 

“Where do you plan on going?” asked Suguri. “Perhaps I can help you.” 

“Um…” Taki could feel his face growing hot, and then he felt it growing even hotter when he blurted out inexplicably, “Victoria’s Secret!” 

Why the hell did he say that? And why were Suguri’s eyes lighting up like fucking firecrackers? Gods. _This_ is why one shouldn’t lie, Taki bemoaned silently. He suddenly wished he were that frog trapped at the bottom of that well his mother had told him about. That frog didn’t lie about wanting to buy crotchless panties for his sister at Victoria’s Secret and then have to make good on that while his surrogate father tagged along. And even if it did, that frog would never have to lie its way out of that first lie because it was stuck in that well until kingdom come. What a disaster. His wayward dick was getting him into the worst predicaments! He had always been honest with Suguri before, but ever since he’d given in to his lust for Klaus, his pants were veritably on fire from lying, burnt to a crisp, just the like the rest of him would be in the afterlife. 

“Victoria’s Secret, eh?” Suguri poured himself another cup of coffee. “I had no idea your sister…well, I suppose young women her age…regardless, it would be best for you to go on your own. Although, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for her own boyfriend to buy such items for her?” Suguri wondered if Aikawa-san shopped there. Her unmentionables were all rather racy, a good thing as far as he was concerned. 

Taki couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with Suguri, and yet, the man had always been open with advice on anything. He’d probably seen all manner of weirdness in his life and the stupidity of Taki’s actions of late was hardly going to faze a man of his sophistication. 

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Taki mumbled. “But, she’s trying to get one, so…I told her I’d send her something that a guy would find…appealing.” He really needed to find a sock and gag himself with it. That he would drag his innocent sister into this clusterfuck of lies was just unforgiveable. 

The smile gracing Suguri’s face bordered on a mixture of pity and amusement. “And you consider yourself an expert on these matters?” 

Suguri couldn’t hold back a chuckle that went on a little too long. He shook his head and wiped at his eyes, thinking back fondly to his first experience with a woman. For his sixteenth birthday his own father had paid to have him lose his virginity to a prostitute. The woman was probably only in her thirties, but to his inexperienced teenaged eyes she looked ancient. Still, none of that mattered because she had let him touch her naked body and when she put her mouth on his cock, and then put his cock in her pussy, he knew she was sent from the gods, nothing had ever felt like _that_. The experience had been life altering in a way; it had awoken something in him that had lain dormant, expanded his world, made him feel things he didn’t know he could feel. He looked at Taki now and wondered if he had gone through the same epiphany with that big blond hulk, the one with the short hair, not the long-haired one who had dishonestly claimed responsibility. Overreaching animals, the two of them. At twenty, what could Taki know about love? Lust was one thing, love another, and as long as Taki hadn’t been foolish enough to give his heart, Suguri would stay his hand from reprimanding him too harshly. He would rather punish Klaus and Noah anyway.

*** 

Two hours later, Suguri picked up his phone and saw where Taki was, and he wasn’t at any Victoria’s Secret location in Manhattan. He was in Flushing, Queens, at Klaus’s apartment.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Kenzo stopped making this men's cologne years ago and it's almost impossible to find it now. One of the best smelling men's cologne ever in my opinion.
> 
> This chapter was so freaking silly. I dunno, I needed a little silliness.


	24. Chapter 24

 

All the way to Flushing, Taki had sat staring out the window of the cab, his stomach in knots, guilt-ridden and elated as he lightly rubbed his finger against the edges of the blue pill in the right pocket of his linen trousers. It was summer and it was hot and he had dressed lightly to go out…shopping. That was what he had told Suguri over breakfast. He was such a liar! He wished he could have rolled a joint and taken a few hits to make himself not give a shit—even better than pot would have been the opium in Suguri’s stash; then an asteroid could’ve hit the earth and he wouldn’t have cared—but indulging in anything like that _during_ the season was just asking for trouble. Random drug testing was a real thing in pro baseball, even if it was just for show. What he was already doing was bad enough, drugs or no drugs. If his gods were watching, what would they be saying amongst themselves? When had he turned into such a dishonest slut? Not that long ago he had been a virgin by his own choosing. He had looked all he wanted, sure, but he had never let anyone touch him. No one, besides his mother and sisters and other female relatives, had ever even kissed him, and not _that_ way, on the mouth and…with tongue. He leaned his shoulders against the backseat and closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the silken feel of Klaus’s tongue against his own, wrapping around it…muscular, insistent, owning him. Just that memory alone gave him courage. And a hard-on. He couldn’t wait for Klaus to do it all over again, make him weak in the knees and panting for more. 

*** 

Claudia called him while he was busy putting the clean sheets back on the bed. The smutty novel was now tucked away in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. For future reference, Klaus had told himself. Some of the porny sections were just begging for a second or third reading. 

“Hey, sis,” Klaus said after hitting the ‘speaker’ button. “You got my message, eh?” 

“Yeah. What have you done now?” Claudia made a valiant effort to sound sarcastic. For Klaus to ask for help…well, that was akin to the heralding of the Apocalypse. Her little brother, like most pig-headed men, would sooner cut off his own limbs than request assistance of any kind. Once, her brother had driven for hours at night, lost on the desert roads of Nevada after a particularly intense session with a hooker and way too much crystal meth, and ended up in Arizona the next morning, in jail for accidentally crashing his pick-up into the façade of a Dunkin’ Donuts. She only knew about the incident because he had no choice but to call her and ask her to post bail for him. That was three years ago and he had remained on fairly good behavior after she’d ripped a new hole into him over the phone. That he was coming to her now for help could only mean one thing and it had to be a real doozy. “Did you murder someone?” 

“What?” Klaus stood bolt upright in shock. “How could you even think that of me?” 

“Okay. Maybe not murder; manslaughter, then,” Claudia conceded, so fucking relieved. She put the coffee on and reached into the fridge for eggs and orange juice. Her husband was still in the shower; breakfast would be ready by the time he was shaved and dressed. She knew that Klaus was an erratic sleeper, so it hadn’t been a surprise that he had texted her at five-thirty in the morning while she was still in dreamland. “Maybe…you’ve knocked someone up and you need money for—” 

“Are you kidding me? When have I ever _not_ used protection?” Klaus was insulted. He may be an addict of various sorts, but he was absolutely compulsive when it came to safeguarding his dick. He could still recall with clarity the images he had seen in seventh grade sex-ed class when the gym teacher had shown a video about the dangers of STDs. Those clinical photos of private parts rotting from syphilis or gonorrhea or whatever other frightening diseases were burned into his brain and would forever remain there as if etched in stone. Then there were those novels he had read in high school by the French and English Romantic authors where all a man needed to do was look at a whore and his dick would fall off, riddled with sores and boils. Okay, maybe it took more than just a look, but Klaus had done plenty of looking _and_ doing and he was pretty sure his cock would have fallen off long ago had he not been so OCD about condoms. 

“So, no pregnant girlfriend?” ventured Claudia. 

“No! No one’s fucking pregnant! Not by me, at least.” Klaus tucked in the corners of the sheets and then laid the comforter on top. He could already imagine Taki’s pale body all spread out for him…on his stomach? Yeah, on his stomach, thighs parted just so, moaning for him… 

“So what’s the problem, then?” Claudia asked. 

“It’s…it’s not really a problem,” Klaus stammered. He sat on the bed and squeezed his temples in frustration. “I’ve met someone.” 

That was code for “I’ve got a new addiction.” Her brother had always been all or nothing in everything he did or wanted in life. Their own mother had been the same way, pursuing her obsessions no matter how far away it took her from her husband and children. Claudia had always resented their mother for putting her own desires first, but Klaus had followed in her footsteps. If he wanted something or someone, there was no stopping him, he would have it come hell or high water. All Claudia could do was give her brother comfort, a place to crash, forgiveness and permission to forget. “Do I get to meet this person before you make another mistake?” 

“Yeah. I mean, I want you to. I was hoping to bring him by during the All-Star break.” 

A few seconds ticked by before it registered on her brain. Then she queried, genuinely puzzled, “ _Him_?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really sorry this chapter is so short, but I've hit a wall, and I wanted to post what little I've managed to write before things kinda went to shit.
> 
> Yesterday, I discovered that someone stole a story I had written for the football fandom—not just a line or a paragraph or a page—but the whole thing, all 21 chapters, and claimed it as his/her own. I can't believe this person had the gall to provide a direct link to my story on A03 and falsely claim authorship.
> 
> Right now, I'm a little shaken and I'll do my best to continue this story. The Maiden Rose fandom is amazing and I don't want what's happened to slow me down. Thanks so much for reading.


	25. Chapter 25

 

When Klaus sheepishly revealed the object of his latest fixation, Claudia was surprised, and then, not surprised. She had never known him to fall for a guy, but her brother could be unpredictable, stubborn, and wildly passionate—like some weird mule-wolf-junkie hybrid, a Chimera on two legs—and, at times, driven by a need and hunger she couldn’t fathom. She had first noticed a pronounced restlessness in him—what could only be a search for some mysterious part that was missing from his soul—when they had returned from their yearlong sojourn in Japan as teenagers. Even before that, though, he had fallen into an odd depression while they were still in Japan, right after their father had taken the family to Kyoto to watch the emperor’s ceremonial procession. Klaus had been glum and silent afterwards, not like his usual boisterous self, and Claudia had asked him if he was ill. He had replied with a strangely introspective question. 

“How do you fill that empty space inside you?” It was night and they were stretched out on futons on the floor of their room at the onsen. Klaus was on his back, arms crossed behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling. “How do you go on living after you’ve seen something so perfect it leaves a hole in your heart? Nothing else will ever be good enough, will it? You’ll always be looking and hoping and wishing for something you’ll never find again.” 

Claudia had gazed at his profile in the dark, his blond hair silvery in the moonlight cast in from the clerestory window. Klaus was around sixteen at the time and she had assumed that he had seen a beautiful geisha, someone way out of his league, and was overwhelmed with teenaged angst. She had felt those same things herself, being a few years older than him, and had suffered through her own share of unrequited crushes and hoped-for affairs that had withered before they had ever fully bloomed. Being in love sucked at that age. 

“Don’t worry,” Claudia had told him, wanting to console him. Even though they were only a few years apart, she was almost maternal in her feelings towards him. He was often crass and coarse, too bluntly honest for his own good. His devil may care attitude had rubbed more than a few people the wrong way in Japan, where everyone was expected to display proper etiquette. And yet, he was still capable of showing a deeply romantic—even philosophical—side that was tender and sweet and full of yearning. Klaus’s melancholy had reminded Claudia of their grandfather, who would tell them mysterious stories about how certain people were like flowers and how one needed to follow their scent in order to find the Promised Land, to become whole, to be truly at home. “Didn’t grandpa always tell you? _You’d_ be the one to reach the Promised Land.” 

And now, she wondered, had her brother indeed found the Promised Land? Had he recaptured that thing of perfection that had left a hole in his heart so long ago? Had he followed the scent of the flower, _his_ flower, all the way to its source? 

So she told Klaus, “Yes, bring him.” She would see for herself if this Taki Reizen was that rarest of roses. 

*** 

_You let me violate you_

_You let me desecrate you_

_You let me penetrate you_

_You let me complicate you_

_Help me_

_I broke apart my insides…_

 

Klaus had his kitchen radio tuned to some college station as he straightened out his apartment and the DJ was playing some old Nine Inch Nails song* that was making him feel guilty as all heck, especially when that freak, Trent Reznor, started singing:

 

_I want to fuck you like an animal_

_I want to feel you from the inside…_

 

Goddamn it all! Wasn’t that what he had done to Taki? Violated him? Desecrated him? And he _still_ wanted to fuck him like an animal because once or twice wasn’t enough. Christ. He sounded like a Jacqueline Susann novel. He had read his mother’s stash of dirty novels when he was thirteen and oh so curious about sex. He didn’t even understand half of what was written, he was so inexperienced, but it had been undeniably titillating no matter how ignorant he was. He could still remember sneaking into his parent’s bedroom and rifling through the pages of the paperbacks, looking for the choice parts, and then hurrying into the bathroom and masturbating to things he didn’t even understand. All he knew was that reading those words had started a party in his pants and there was no respite until he did that thing that finally brought him relief. 

“What a fucking idiot,” Klaus mumbled to himself. He was twenty-six now and the thought of being with Taki sent him right back to being that clumsy, know-nothing, horny adolescent creaming his pants at the mere idea of someone other than himself touching his cock. Taki. Oh, Taki. Those blue-black eyes, that mouth, that scent, such pale, smooth skin…and the sounds that he made when they were… 

The shrill buzzing from the intercom yanked Klaus from his reverie. His heart skipped a few beats because he _knew_ who it was. 

“Come on up,” Klaus said. He found himself mindlessly rubbing his sweating palms on his shorts. Fuck. He was nervous. Why? Now was the worst time to be nervous. “Get a grip,” Klaus muttered under his breath. “It’s not like you haven’t done this before.” Then he opened his door and waited, fighting the urge to rush down the stairwell. He couldn’t risk that. No. The image of Suguri wielding a sword loomed over every encounter he dared have with Taki. Klaus could be accused of many things, but he wasn’t stupid. 

In a short while, he heard light footsteps and then Taki appeared at the top of the stairs, a little flushed and out of breath. The stairwell was stuffy and hot in the summer heat and Taki hadn’t paused at all on his way up. He gave Klaus a demur smile as he cleared the last step and walked slowly down the hallway to his door. He stopped three feet in front of him and panted, “I’m supposed to be shopping at Victoria’s Secret.” 

“Really?” Klaus’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh…” He pictured Taki in one of those lacey teddies with the spaghetti straps and the cutouts at both tits and crotch and he immediately popped a boner. “…you’d better come in.” 

*** 

Klaus was fumbling with the buttons on Taki’s shirt as he kissed into him, kicking the door shut behind him as he backed Taki into his apartment. Taki was sweating from the climb up five flights of stairs but it only made his normal intoxicating scent even headier. Klaus’s mind was swimming in it; he couldn’t breathe him in _enough_. 

“Christ, you’re like a drug,” Klaus groaned into Taki’s ear before he sucked the lobe into his mouth and grinned when he felt Taki shiver with arousal. “The sweetest drug ever…I can’t get enough of you…wanna eat you alive.” But when he went for his mouth again he felt Taki’s hand come up between their lips. 

“Wait,” Taki said softly, the look in his eyes barely concealing his embarrassment. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten shy overnight.” He looked down at Taki’s bared chest and saw that his nipples were already hard. The bulge in Taki’s linen trousers told Klaus that the rest of him was ready to get busy, too. “You want this, don’t you?” 

“Yes.” This time, it came out quiet as a whisper and spoken to the floor. Taki nervously reached into his pocket and held out the pill in the palm of his hand. “I brought you something…for us.” 

It didn’t take long for Klaus to figure out what he was looking at and it was like getting slapped across the face with a two by four. During the ensuing seconds of deafening silence between them he felt a wild mixture of emotions: indignation, rage, disappointment, shame, all the things a man feels when he’s been told he’s inadequate in _that_ department. He had never suffered from impotence or performance anxiety before, but he sure as hell did now. 

Klaus must have been wearing a mask of total incomprehension because Taki reached out and took Klaus’s hand, dropping the pill into it. “It’s for stamina,” he explained gently. 

“I know what it’s for!” Klaus shouted, finally snapping out of his mental paralysis. “Fucking hell! I have never been so insulted in my whole life! I’ll have you know, my plumbing works just fine!” 

Taki pulled away, eyes wide with confusion. “But, Suguri-san says—” 

“Jesus fucking H. Christ! Suguri-san? Don’t tell me you told him about—” 

“I didn’t say anything to him!” Now Taki was shouting, too. “But Suguri-san says it’s important to have stamina with a—” 

“Stamina? You think I don’t have stamina, is that it? Fine!” Klaus angrily popped the pill into his mouth and chewed with a vengeance. It tasted awful and it only added fuel to Klaus’s fury. “I’ll give you stamina, you little bitch. I’ll give you so much fucking stamina you won’t be able to sit for the rest of the season!” 

With that, Klaus threw Taki over his shoulder, turning to lock the door in case Suguri was lurking within a five-mile radius, and carried him to the bedroom. As pissed as Klaus was, he couldn’t help but remember how some of his teammates in Triple-A would take Viagra like a party drug. Klaus had never used it himself, preferring amphetamines, but he knew that guys would take it if they had a particularly hot date lined up and they wanted to act the part of the stud in bed, or if they were lucky enough to have a threesome or even foursome planned. Hey, it was Vegas, and all of that was run-of-the-mill hijinks. In his own experience, there was nothing like crystal meth to keep a man hard for _days_ , but he couldn’t go down that road again. He was in the pros now and he had to stay clean. Claudia would kill him if he tested positive for illegal substances, that was a given. 

By the time he tossed Taki onto his bed he was only superficially furious. He didn’t want to waste time being too upset to enjoy some no-holds-barred banging. “Hey, Taki.” Klaus stood gazing down at him spread eagle on the duvet, his hair fanned out like a shiny black halo around his flushed face. “Do you know what a ‘teaching moment’ is?” Klaus was going to teach Taki a thing or two alright. 

Taki stared back up at him, his own anger still bubbling at high heat. How dare Klaus call him a little bitch! Taki wasn’t going to be anyone’s bitch! He had stolen the pill—a very bad thing indeed—all for Klaus’s sake, to make things easier for him, and Klaus had repaid him with insolence. Klaus had only taken the pill out of spite instead of gratitude. Damn him! If Taki had given the pill to Noah, he probably would have received the kind of thanks properly due for such an act of thoughtfulness. Noah. Sweet, considerate Noah. 

“No,” Taki said, propping himself up onto his elbows. “Maybe I should ask Noah what a ‘teaching moment’ is. I’m sure he’d be happy to tell me. Maybe he’d show me what real stamina is, too.” 

Oh man. Bad idea.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The lyrics are from the song Closer by Nine Inch Nails.


	26. Chapter 26

 

Well, that just about did it. 

Maybe it was that look of prideful indignation on Taki’s face that made Klaus set his jaw with determination. Maybe it was the fact that Taki had uttered that man’s name like it was a weapon wielded against him. Fine. Klaus was shaking with rage but he wasn’t going to lose the battle, not this time; he wasn’t going to lose to that Viking shithead when he was the one who had Taki laid out on his bed. It irked Klaus to no end that both he and Noah were the same age, were both blond and tall and ripped. Yet Thor was the All-Star and a fucking god in New York while Klaus was just a no-name rookie and on-again/off-again drug addict. Still. He gazed down at Taki and his cock hardened further in his shorts. Yeah. He had Taki and that was worth everything in the world. 

“Take your clothes off,” Klaus ordered. He folded his arms across his chest. And waited. 

A few seconds elapsed before Taki reacted, his lips pursed in a pout and then falling open in protest. “Shouldn’t you—” 

“Off. Now.” 

A scowl flashed across Taki’s face before he sat up and pulled off his shirt, then toed off his shoes. The trousers came off next, along with the briefs and socks. Then he scooted up towards the headboard and laid his head on a pillow, his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands folded neatly over his genitals in some pretense of modesty. Taki looked up at Klaus with wary expectation. 

“Open your legs,” Klaus muttered, his voice already wrecked with desire. 

The icy hot stare from Klaus made Taki grit his teeth and obey despite the shame setting his face on fire. He pulled his knees up and parted his thighs, but when he shut his eyes against the embarrassment of being so exposed, Klaus immediately barked, “Keep your eyes open, too!” Again, Taki obeyed, meeting Klaus’s gaze as Klaus slowly peeled off his t-shirt, flexing his muscles, putting on a show. How you like me now, Taki? 

Taki looked so vulnerable, fully naked while Klaus was still half-covered. It made Klaus feel powerful and weak at the same time. He didn’t even know what to think, what to feel, didn’t know what he really wanted to do. He couldn’t leave marks, not like the last time. He wanted to punish Taki for bringing him Viagra, as if he thought Klaus was less than virile, less than capable of satisfying him. Okay. So maybe Taki had wanted more during their first encounter and Klaus hadn’t been able to get it up that third or fourth time. Whatever. He wasn’t fifteen anymore with no lag time. But the pill he had swallowed was kicking in because he was rock hard in his shorts and it felt like he would stay hard til kingdom come. Klaus grinned and unbuttoned his shorts, unzipped, and let both shorts and boxers fall past his hips. He kicked it all away and ran a hand down his chest, past his six-pack abs until he reached his engorged cock. 

“Is this what you want, Taki?” Klaus asked as he gripped the thick shaft in his fist. “You want this inside you?” 

Without any awareness, Taki licked his lips and then scrambled forward on the bed towards Klaus, his own erection bobbing in front of him. “Klaus,” Taki moaned eagerly. He was stopped abruptly when Klaus reached out with his other hand and shoved Taki back. 

“No. You don’t get any of this. Not until I say you can.” 

At that, the anger rose back in Taki, his face and neck and chest reddening from the shock of Klaus denying him his rightful due. Taki got up on his knees, one hand raised, ready to land a much-deserved slap on Klaus’s cheek but Klaus caught his wrist and threw him back down on the mattress and pinned his arms over his head, Klaus’s knees straddling Taki’s hips as he loomed over him. 

“Don’t move,” Klaus growled right into his mouth. 

The undisguised threat in Klaus’s voice rendered Taki boneless. Yes. Yes. Taki couldn’t stifle a shudder, arousal coursing through him like a jolt of electricity. _This_ was what he wanted from Klaus, that commanding tone bringing him to his knees, making him ache for complete possession. He wanted to lose himself, lose his mind in a storm of passion and maybe even a little pain. 

“Klaus. Don’t.” Ah, there, he did it again. Such an awful liar. Even as Taki said the words aloud he was writhing with need. He had been good for so long and now…he only wanted to be bad. 

“Don’t? That only applies to you.” Klaus sat back on his heels, still straddled over Taki, and began stroking himself, slowly at first, then with more urgency as he saw Taki matching him in excitement, Taki’s hands gripping the pillow above his head, his breaths quickening as he watched Klaus pleasuring himself. In another few strokes Klaus was over the top, spurting onto Taki’s chest as they both groaned out. Klaus smeared his cum onto his fingers, then brought his fingers to Taki’s mouth and to his great surprise, Taki sucked them in, one by one, all the while staring back at Klaus with fuck-drunk eyes. 

“Are you thinking about Noah?” Klaus asked, his voice still thick with unsated lust. Taki shook his head quickly and Klaus couldn’t help but chuckle in triumph. Even as he came down from his orgasmic high, Klaus realized his dick wasn’t softening at all, wasn’t even tender to the touch. Right. He pushed himself off of Taki and scooted up against the headboard, reached into the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out a condom and the bottle of lube. He rolled on the rubber and jerked his head at Taki. “Come here,” he said as he slicked up his sheathed cock. 

Taki scrambled over and settled himself into Klaus’s lap. He was so turned on he could barely work himself halfway onto Klaus’s cock before he felt his own orgasm rushing in at him. “Klaus! K-Klaus!” 

As soon as Klaus wrapped his hand around his cock he came, wetting them both. Taki trembled, only partly impaled, gasping, his heart beating a mile a minute, but he was only getting started. It took only moments for his body to unclench and then he was ready for round two. This time, Taki breathed in deeply, relaxing his muscles, and slowly took Klaus’s cock fully inside him. He felt ready to burst into flames, he was so filled and out of his mind with some wild, primal desire that obliterated all rational thought. He had never felt more captured and free. Taki threw his head back and rocked rhythmically in Klaus’s lap, both hands clinging to Klaus’s shoulders as he let fall the most obscene moans from his lips. He didn’t care what he looked like, what he sounded like to his gods, he knew he was beautiful like this, fucking himself on Klaus’s dick, wanting him so badly and taking it all like a shameless slut. 

“Touch me,” Taki begged, the words deep in his throat and pushed out breathlessly. “Touch me now.” 

Klaus leaned forward and took Taki’s left earlobe in his mouth and sucked hard as he wrapped his hand around Taki’s cock and pumped firmly, from balls to crown, twisting and turning with each stroke as Taki bucked wilder and wilder and then froze, his mouth open in a silent scream before the cries tumbled out of him as he came, heat pouring off his body, tears trickling down his face. He had never looked more exquisite. He was perfection, thought Klaus. Taki was his, and he would never let him go. 

*** 

“I want you to meet my sister,” Klaus told him. 

They were still lying in bed after Klaus had fucked Taki again, this time from behind and they had come in unison. But now they were both sore and tender and even though Klaus’s dick was still hard, they weren’t going to make another attempt. “You break it, you buy it,” Klaus had warned Taki before Taki finally agreed to give it a rest. Besides, they had to shower and then head out to the stadium. Steven Matz was pitching and that meant Klaus would likely be slotted in to bat and then catch after Terry made a pitching change and Klaus definitely wanted to take plenty of batting practice. He had a feeling he would get lucky at the plate. He had already hit a few home runs in bed, after all, and that always seemed to help him with his swing in the game. 

Taki was silent for a while and then he said, “Okay, but I want you to meet my sisters, too.” 

That response caught Klaus off-guard. Did that mean Taki wanted him to go back to Japan with him to meet his family? Did that mean Taki was willing to take this to the next level, beyond mere fuck-buddies or even lovers, but into serious commitment territory? 

“Uh, sisters? How many have you got?” asked Klaus, trying to sound nonchalant. 

“Four.” 

“Ho-ly shit,” Klaus murmured. It was bad enough getting his ass kicked by one sister; he couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like getting trampled by _four_ of them. No wonder Taki was such a freak. The next words out of Taki’s mouth confirmed Klaus's suspicions. 

“They might want to style your hair…and paint your nails,” Taki speculated. The triplets were twelve years younger than him and had loved making him ‘pretty’ with all sorts of girlie accoutrements. He had tolerated it because it had made his sister Yura laugh to see him with six barrettes stuck in his hair and their stepmother’s rouge brushed onto his cheeks. The memory made Taki homesick for them. 

“Riiight. Well, I’ll have to give that some thought. But, uh, my sister Claudia is really looking forward to meeting you. I mean, she knows who you are, of course. She watches all the games and she’s seen you pitch, so…” What the hell was he trying to say? He didn’t want Taki to think that he was being inspected, scrutinized under a microscope as if he needed to pass some sort of test. 

“I’ll have to ask Suguri-san,” Taki stated. “If he says it’s alright, then…I will be happy to meet her. Suguri-san will probably want to meet her, too.”

Shit. Klaus had forgotten all about Suguri, the dark shadow that loomed over everything it seemed. He cleared his throat and prayed that Claudia would know how to handle a man like Suguri. “Yeah, sure. Ask him and I’ll set something up. It’ll be fun.” Yeah, as fun as a visit to the proctologist, Klaus thought glumly. Then he rolled over and wrapped his arms around Taki once more. He was so small and warm nestled against him like that and when Klaus pressed his nose into Taki’s neck and breathed him in, he could smell that intoxicating floral scent that made Klaus’s head spin and his heart clench with longing and, now, on top of that, he could smell what he knew was their cum, his and Taki’s, all over the two of them. Mine, he thought, you’re mine. That idea alone was enough to push his worries aside for a few blissful moments.

“C’mon, we better shower,” Klaus said with a sigh. “I wanna get to the stadium early. Maybe I’ll hit a home run just for you.”

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

 

It was only the fourth inning and Steven Matz had hit both Jonathan Lucroy and Charlie Blackmon with fastballs that got away from him. The Rockies were itching for payback because Blackmon had been voted into the All-Star Game and now he had an angry bruise on his right tricep that was rapidly swelling into a lemon-sized knot as he stood on first base. Travis d’Arnaud had only just returned from the DL and the Mets catcher was due to lead off the bottom half of the inning. This was bad. Everyone in the stadium knew that the first batter up for the Mets was going to get a ball thrown at some part of his body in return and Terry didn’t want d’Arnaud put in the line of fire. So… 

Terry ambled down the length of the dugout and stopped in front of Klaus, who was sitting behind Taki and staring at his adorable and very sore ass as Taki stood leaning against the railing. 

“Get ready, Wolfstadt. You’re pinch-hitting for Travis,” Terry told him. 

Yeah, Taki wasn’t the only one who was going to get drilled today, Klaus thought with bemused resignation. At least this meant that he’d have a few at-bats and he wanted to do something impressive. He and Taki had gotten to the stadium early, but Suguri was already there in the clubhouse waiting in front of Taki’s locker. 

“I brought you your change of clothes, Taki-sama,” Suguri had said after giving Klaus a stern once-over and making him feel two feet tall. “You forgot your bag when you left to go shopping this morning.” 

“Ah, yes, Suguri-san. ” Taki had bowed to Suguri and taken the duffel. “Thank you so much.” 

It was all spoken in Japanese, but Klaus understood it easily. He could feel Taki melting with shame and guilt right in front of him. It made Klaus feel unworthy, like he was Taki’s dirty secret. Fuck. He didn’t want to be anyone’s dirty secret, least of all Taki’s. He wanted Taki to be proud of him, proud to show him off like the handsome, manly dude that he was. For a split second, Klaus had been gripped with a wild impulse to pull Taki into his arms and kiss him, tongue and all, just to see Suguri shit his pants, just to shove it into his disapproving face. But then Noah had walked in and bowed deeply to Suguri and Taki like the obsequious, insufferable bastard that he was, ignoring Klaus altogether, and shit, an even stronger impulse washed over Klaus, the impulse to put his fist through perfect Noah’s face. Christ. When had everything slipped out of his control? 

And then, as if things couldn't have gotten any worse, they did: Matt sauntered in wearing flip-flops, a ratty tank top, and stained shorts, and pointed at Suguri. “Texas hold ’em. Saturday night.” 

“Very good,” Suguri had said. “I’ll host.” 

Matt had then pointed at Noah and Klaus. “You guys in?” But it hadn’t been a question really; it was merely the opening volley, the firing of the first shot. And both Noah and Klaus knew what the war entailed, what they were fighting over, what they were betting on, the prize, the pot. It was Taki.

***  

As Klaus grabbed his bat and headed out of the dugout to the on-deck circle, he steeled himself. He was going to have to take one for the team. It was going to hurt and he could only hope that Jon Gray would aim for his gluteus maximus rather than his head. He was dealt a glancing blow off his ribs on the very first pitch, the impact lessened because it had been a changeup and he was able to twist his body away to avoid getting hit too directly. Klaus nodded calmly at the pitcher as he trotted to first base; it could have been a lot worse and Gray had taken care of business like a professional. The next time Klaus came to bat, though, Gray was out and the Rockies’ closer Adam Ottavino was on the mound and dealing high heat. The first pitch was a fastball that buzzed right under his chin and knocked Klaus to the dirt. The second pitch was another fastball, chest-high, and Klaus was ready. He crushed it into right-center field, into what was formerly known as the Pepsi Porch, a rarity at Citi Field. The stadium erupted in cheers. It was enough to give the Mets a one-run lead, and Jeurys Familia was able to close it out in the bottom of the ninth. 

*** 

Taki had left long before Klaus finished talking to the media, first on the field after the game had ended and then at his locker after a much-needed shower. With his hair still wet and wearing a faded but clean Metallica t-shirt and a pair of shorts, Klaus listened intently as Kevin Burkhardt from SNY asked him, "How satisfying was it to take it long and deep after getting drilled earlier?"

Klaus almost swallowed his own tongue, the question was so obscenely worded and yet so sincerely posited. “Well, Kev,” Klaus replied with a cough, “let’s just say I enjoyed it very much.” 

Matt was still lurking around the clubhouse when Klaus finally headed down the tunnel to leave. He was pitching tomorrow, so that meant no clubbing for Matt tonight. 

“Hey, Wolfstadt.” Matt clapped Klaus on the shoulder. “Wanna get some grub?” 

Klaus looked sideways at him. It wasn’t like Matt to be friendly and Klaus didn’t exactly enjoy his company, but he was starving and he didn’t want to act like a total douche even if Matt seemed to specialize in being one. So he grunted, “Yeah, why the fuck not.” 

They took a cab to a dive bar a few minutes away, one that Matt obviously patronized regularly because the waitress handed only Klaus a bar menu and said to Matt, “The usual, honey?” 

“Yep.” Then Matt turned to Klaus and said, “I’d recommend the brisket. They smoke it right out back in retrofitted garbage cans.” 

Klaus didn’t believe the quip about the garbage cans, but he did go along with Matt’s recommendation for the brisket. And they both ordered bourbon. 

“Looks like we have something in common,” Matt commented with a smirk, “besides a taste for forbidden fruit.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Klaus. He was too tired and sore from the game to muster up any real anger and still flying high from the fuckfest with Taki earlier in the day. Right, Taki. Is that what Matt was getting at? 

Matt shrugged. “We both have things we crave,” he said with an almost disinterested sigh, “holes to fill…big, black, bottomless holes.” 

They both sucked down their drinks, their throats and stomachs burning deliciously, and ordered another round before their meals came: sliced smoked brisket served with a side of cole slaw, pickles, baked beans, and a square of cornbread. They dug in and ate noisily around their conversational silence, finished half their plates before Klaus observed aloud, “ We’re just a bunch of fucking animals.” He couldn’t imagine Taki doing this, stuffing his face full of meat, lips greasy with rendered fat, contentedly sinking into a blissful alcoholic haze. He looked at Matt and asked without thinking, “Have you ever been in love?” 

Matt smacked his lips around two sauce-laden fingers and rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, Wolfstadt. If you want to blow me so bad, just _ask_. You don’t have to bring _love_ into it.” 

“Fuck. You. Motherfucker.” Klaus shook his head and went back to eating. Why was he even talking to this guy? Why did he think Matt was capable of even the vaguest human feelings? Matt was nothing more than a bitter, has-been ace with a superhero-sized ego and an even bigger chip on his shoulder who— 

“It messed me up,” Matt interrupted, as if he could hear Klaus’s internal tirade. “Being in love is the worst thing that can happen to a man. Once you’ve had it, you can’t do without it…it’s like the best drug. And when you lose it, when it’s gone…you spend the rest of your life trying to get it back…like a zombie craving flesh, but no matter how much flesh you eat, it’s never enough…’cause you’re a zombie and you’re fucked, and everything you touch gets equally fucked, and—” 

“Are you talking about love or _The Walking Dead_?” asked Klaus. 

Matt’s eyes widened with conviction. “Love of course. What else?” 

“What’s love got to do with zombies?” 

“What _doesn’t_ have to do with zombies? Don’t you know, zombies are the perfect metaphor for the shit show we call life: you’re born, you fall in love, you get fucked and then fucked over, and then you die, after gorging on delicious meat.” On that sage note, Matt went back to eating. 

They capped off the night with another drink, both of them sweating but feeling no pain. 

“I’m going to sleep well tonight,” Klaus mumbled, slowly rubbing his belly and then stretching his arms over and behind his head to crack his back and neck. The only thing that could make things even better was to have Taki in his bed with him. The thought of actually falling asleep with him, waking up with him…it made his heart twinge. 

“You’ve got that look on your face again, Wolfstadt.” Matt was chewing on a toothpick and leaning back in his chair. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Sure you do. You’re thinking about playing hide-the-sausage with your little Japanese girlfriend.” 

Klaus didn’t even know how to respond to that. Was it that obvious? He didn’t doubt that Matt had caught on some time ago, but Matt had never said anything to his face. Or had he? He couldn’t even remember what had passed between them, what had been hinted at or implied. 

Matt leaned in and grinned. “Don’t worry, Casanova. I’m all for sampling exotic dishes. But you should know that Thor’s been licking the same lollipop.” 

“Licking the—? What is wrong with you?” Klaus found himself lunging across the table and shaking Matt by the front of his shirt. “What do you know? Did you see something?” 

“Whoa, dude, hold your horses.” Matt raised both hands in mock surrender. “All I know is that Thor has been stalking your boy since spring training. I saw him taking pictures of him in the shower when we were in Port St. Lucie. I’ll bet Thor’s been jerking it like mad to those ever since.” 

Klaus was incredulous. “Is this true? Or are you fucking with me like usual?” 

“I dunno. Am I?” 

“Fine. Whatever.” Klaus angrily stood up and threw down some bills. “I can’t deal with you. Thanks for screwing up my night.” 

“You’re welcome. And don’t forget about Saturday night,” Matt called after him. “Feel free to bring a friend. Suguri wants to play heads-up so we need an even number.” 

That made Klaus stop in his tracks. As good a head as Klaus had for numbers, no one counted cards and calculated odds better than his sister. Claudia had a knack for it and she could work the percentages in her head at the poker table without breaking a sweat. Of even more awesomeness, she could flop an ace high straight flush on the river without allowing a single muscle to twitch; Claudia gave away nothing—no tells—like a statue without a pulse. 

“Yeah,” Klaus said. “I’ll bring someone.

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

 

Claudia showed up at exactly 9 o’clock sharp bearing gifts: two bottles of Elmer T. Lee Kentucky bourbon. Suguri greeted her in the hallway as she exited the elevator and almost bumped heads with her when they both bowed at the same time. The awkwardness continued as he welcomed her into the condo and introduced her to the men gathered in the living room: Taki first, then Matt, then Noah.

“Your brother is late,” Suguri intoned gravely. “Now we know who inherited the better genes in the family.” He bowed again and kissed the back of her hand like some nineteenth century gentleman and hoped that she wouldn’t notice that he was feeling a touch giddy. This woman wasn’t at all like her hulking dolt of a brother. She was petite and very, very pretty, her strawberry blond hair swept up in a loose bun, leaving the back of her neck exposed. The nape was the most exquisite part of a woman’s body in Suguri’s opinion, an erogenous zone that all skillful lovers knew to lavish with attention, and Claudia’s skin was pale and almost translucent there. Beautiful, thought Suguri. He could imagine himself pressing his lips right _there_.

And she had brought bourbon, a very good bourbon indeed. He took the bottles from her and commented, “Elmer T. Lee hasn’t been available for at least two or three years.”

“Yes, well, I bought a case four years ago and I’ve been rationing it ever since.” Claudia, for her part, gave Suguri a thoroughly undisguised once-over and decided that he was a handsome man, severe-looking, good physique, and sly as a fox. She could practically smell the pheromones pouring out of him. No wonder Klaus was scared shitless. This man could eat her brother for breakfast, but she was a woman and therefore made of a different substance. She was fearless and hard as a diamond and tonight she was going to dazzle them all, especially this man named Suguri. She would have to win him over, remove him as an obstacle, if Klaus were to stand any chance of making it to the Promised Land.

It took her only seconds to decide that Matt and Noah were ordinary chopped liver—big in stature with equally overblown egos and easy to read—boys pretending to be men, in many ways cut from the same cloth as Klaus. She had always beaten the pants off of Klaus at poker and she knew she could make mincemeat out of Matt and Noah, too. On the other hand, Taki was a puzzle—shy and almost painfully reserved—but she knew better than to judge him by his politely closed-off demeanor, which she assumed to be a byproduct of his cultural upbringing. She couldn’t help but wonder what Klaus had actually done with this young man. Kissed him perhaps? Made love to him already? How had Klaus not crushed this man-child? And then the intercom buzzed loudly.

“That must be him,” Suguri announced. He really had to struggle not to roll his eyes out of deference to Claudia. As hardass as he could be towards other men, Suguri was meticulous in his careful treatment of women.

Taki was watching Suguri and Claudia with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. The weirdly potent chemistry between those two was palpable in the air and it felt to Taki as if he were tiptoeing through a minefield. And now a tank was going to roll through it in the form of Klaus. To make things worse, the Mets had won their game earlier in the afternoon behind Noah’s brilliant pitching and the All-Star break was now officially upon them for the next five days, which meant that everyone was eager to celebrate by getting trashed. Even though Noah was the Mets’ sole representative to the event this year, he didn’t have to be in Washington, DC until Monday when the festivities would kick off with the Home Run Derby at Nationals Park. The actual game wouldn’t be played until Tuesday, and that would give Noah more than enough time to recover from a massive hangover. Both he and Matt had brought two six-packs of beer each and were well on their way to a night of wildly idiotic betting, that was for sure. Suguri had been more restrained until now, but he was passionate about bourbon and would likely be indulging once the the first hand was dealt. As Suguri buzzed Klaus into the building, Taki went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of sake. He had already broken his vow of chastity—the Big One—so what did it matter now if he got drunk with the rest of the guys? Who knows, maybe by the end of the night he’d be swinging from the rafters while eating a slab of raw steak.

“Sorry I’m late!” Klaus panted as he stumbled through the door. “There was a fucking electrical fire on the tracks and I was stuck on the train for…oh hey, sis! You made it!” He gave Claudia a hug and a sweaty kiss.

“My god, Klaus, you need a shower.” Claudia wiped her fingers at Klaus’s dripping face. 

“Yeah, well, it was a thousand degrees in the subway. That’s July in the city for you.”

“Dude, take a cab next time,” Noah said, sipping on a cool beer and looking scrubbed and clean. 

Klaus shot Noah a glare, wondering to himself if Noah had doused himself in some expensive cologne to impress Taki. Even so, Noah was right, he should have just taken a cab, but he was low on cash and running late already. He didn’t have time to go to an ATM but ended up stuck for forty-five minutes going nowhere fast on the E train anyway. “Not all of us make a bazillion dollars, Noah. Maybe you could loan me your chauffeur and Bentley next time.” Then Klaus remembered that Taki came from a very wealthy family and could afford to hire a car and driver or take a cab anytime he needed to go anywhere. Shit. Here he was having Taki and Suguri meet his sister and he was the one putting his foot in his mouth. “Uh…I brought shrimp chips…but…they got crushed on the train, so…” Klaus held up the plastic bag with the pulverized chips, “…the beer is still good at least…” He held up the six-pack in his other hand, “…maybe just a little warm.”

Taki stepped forward and took the items from Klaus. “Thank you, Klaus,” he said with a smile. “I’m sure these will be fine.”

“Now that the Man of the Hour has arrived,” Suguri said with no little sarcasm, “shall we begin?”

As they gathered around the round dining room table, Claudia spoke up. “Klaus told me we’re going to play heads-up, but I think it would be more fun to go the more traditional route and work up to it. What do you say, boys?”

Heads-up Texas hold ‘em was intense play, like fencing, but not as interesting for Claudia, who liked to toy with her victims and, like a hunter stalking prey, pick them off one by one until she made her final kill. They each took a seat around the table. Glasses were set out, cards were dealt. Bourbon and beer, crushed shrimp chips, pretzels, spiced pecans…Claudia sat directly across from Suguri but they might as well have been touching shoulder-to-shoulder, breathing in the same air in the tight space shared between them. Each one was snarling inside, eager, experienced. It was a beautiful dance, something Claudia had missed in the years spent with a selfish, cold, dispassionate husband. She had married well but for convenience, to please a father. No more. After years of setting aside her own needs, her own desires, she wanted to _feel_ again, to know what it was to have a man challenge her and for her to rise triumphant. She would have this, have a man who wouldn’t back down until she had him pinned beneath her, begging for mercy. She would have this Suguri. Wreck him. Make him scream her name.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really apologize for this long hiatus. I had written myself into a corner and it's been a while since I've played Texas hold 'em and I didn't want to do any injustice to the game of poker. I will try to do better. Really. Thanks for reading.


	29. Chapter 29

 

They were each playing with $1000, chump change in poker, but it was for fun only and the guys didn’t want to run roughshod over a _lady_. Except this lady had not only brought bourbon, she had also brought a box of rare Cohiba Behikes, one of the perks of having an uncle who worked for the United Nations and travelled regularly to Cuba. Suguri was thrilled about the cigars as he cut the ends and passed them around the table with his lighter. Taki set ashtrays in front of each player and then Suguri dealt the first hand.

“These are impossible to get nowadays,” Suguri commented as he luxuriated in the first drag. He was very impressed. “Bad crop years, you know.”

Klaus was ready to blurt out the fact that his Uncle Hartmann had a source but Claudia cut him off with a venomous smile that said, “Open your mouth and I’ll kill you.” Klaus closed his mouth. She had a plan to help her impulsive brother and she wasn’t going to let him derail it by ingratiating himself to Suguri in a way that was sure to antagonize the man.

“My husband is an aficionado,” she lied smoothly. “He travels a lot for work and he was in Cuba in early 2015. He stocked up right before the shortage.” Her husband did indeed travel for work as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry, but it was Uncle Hartmann who specialized in international contraband. Her husband didn’t smoke, neither cigarettes nor cigars, and he was a boring teetotaler on top of that, not exactly a man to inspire admiration and jealousy in another man.

“Your husband has very good taste,” smiled Suguri, “in women, bourbon, and cigars.” 

“The bourbon is _my_ indulgence,” Claudia replied with breathy sigh, “but I like to think I have good taste in men as well.” She put a cigar to her lips and _sucked_ , slowly, letting the rich flavors of tobacco roll through her mouth.

Now _all_ the guys were staring at Suguri and Claudia, especially Klaus, who was utterly flabbergasted. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. Were those two flirting? Fucking flirting? He looked across the table at Taki, whose eyes were equally huge with disbelief. Taki knew that Suguri-san was quite a smooth talker with the ladies, but he normally didn’t flaunt it in front of others so openly. Was he trying to goad Klaus into doing something regrettable? Did he want to humiliate Klaus in front of his own sister? But, if that were the case, then Claudia seemed to be playing right along with him. What the heck was this?

The oddly intimate exchanges between Suguri and Claudia continued as they played the first ten hands. Matt was downing shots of bourbon like it was going out of style and betting aggressively. Perhaps he was showing off, perhaps this was his normal approach, but Claudia countered by playing weak, always checking on the flop even if she were holding pocket aces, laying low until the turn when she could figure the odds with more certainty. Suguri was being wiley, playing both strong and weak hole cards the same way. Noah and Klaus, though, were calling and raising just as boldly as Matt, not wanting to be upstaged by him, trash talking like idiots and drinking like they had a fire to put out in their gullets. At the other end of the spectrum, Taki was too conservative, checking and folding when he should have been raising, taking uncharacteristically sloppy sips of what looked like water but was in fact sake and forgetting what was a better hand: a full house, a straight, or a flush. Finally, on the eleventh hand, Noah’s stubborn insistence on going all-in on the cursed pocket ace-queen lost him his seat at the table. One out. A glance around the table showed Suguri and Claudia sitting pretty with healthy chip stacks, Matt and Klaus almost evenly tied for third, and Taki with the short stack.

“How come I have so few chips?” asked a dumbfounded Taki. He crunched forlornly on a pretzel.

“You have so few, Taki-sama, because you’ve been so thirsty,” Suguri told him gently. “Perhaps now would be a good time to refill your glass?” Suguri passed the bourbon for another round as Taki went into the kitchen to get another glass of ‘water’ for himself. “Shall we break for five minutes?”

“Yeah,” Matt grumbled. “I need to take a piss.” 

“Me too.” Klaus relit his cigar, not moving in his chair, as he shot Claudia a searching look. “So what do you think of my new friends, sis?” 

Claudia stood up and stretched. “The night is early, little brother. Who knows what I’ll think by the end of it?” She turned to see Taki standing quietly at the entrance to the kitchen clutching his glass and swaying a little. Good lord, thought Claudia, how was this kid ever going to survive Klaus? When Klaus had told her he’d fallen for Taki, she had expected the worst, whatever _that_ was. Her brother’s previous romantic infatuations, tenuous as they were, had been with hardened escorts and meth addicts, women who knew how to con and wheedle and manipulate. Taki was just a naïve boy barely a man. No wonder Suguri was guarding him. She almost felt a responsibility to tell Taki, “Run, kid, run away while you can! Run before you’re eaten by the big, bad wolf!” And, yet, the way Taki looked at Klaus made her realize that it was too late for that. He’d already been gobbled up.

When Suguri disappeared into his room for a few moments, Claudia pulled Taki aside into the living room and whispered quietly to him, “Klaus told me about you.” She stood even with him and could look him straight in the eye. The unusual blue-black of his irises startled her momentarily, and she suddenly understood what had happened to Klaus. This boy was not like any ordinary boy.  She could feel it, like a remembered dream. “I know he loves you.”

Now it was Taki’s turn to be taken aback. Had Klaus ever said that he loved him? He couldn’t remember, especially not at this moment when his face was burning up. Even if Klaus hadn’t said it to him—so embarrassing!—he must have told Claudia—even more embarrassing! Oh gods, he was going to puke. “Please excuse me, but I must use the bathroom.” He bowed politely and went into the en suite in his bedroom and quickly poured the sake down the drain. He filled it with water instead and drank it down. Then he washed his face. What was he doing, getting drunk, making a fool of himself in front of her? That was Klaus’s thing, the whole “I don’t give a shit about manners” attitude. No, he had to pull himself together. Suguri-san had taught him better than this. Or maybe he had been learning it all ass backwards.

***

It took only two more hands to knock Taki out. He was lit and out of sorts and went all-in without even looking at his hole cards, which turned out to be a queen of hearts and an ace of spades. He had an open-ended straight draw going until the river, a seven of clubs. He was done for the night and joined Noah out on the balcony for some fresh air. Eight more hands later, both Klaus and Matt were eliminated. Matt had put up a harder fight than Klaus, but only because the man had more years of accumulated bitterness than Klaus and had fallen victim to the same ace-queen temptation as Noah had. In the end, Suguri clapped a paternal hand on Matt’s shoulder and said, “Better luck next time.”

Matt shook Suguri’s hand. “Good game, my man. But this lady’s gonna kick your ass.” He winked at Claudia and then went out onto the balcony where Noah and Klaus were arguing over whether Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen were brother and sister or aunt and nephew or cousins on _Game of Thrones_. Taki appeared to be passed out on a recliner. “Hey, losers!” Matt bellowed. That roused Taki from his stupor. “There’s a new club in Hell’s Kitchen I wanna check out. Let’s go.”

Taki stumbled over to Suguri and asked, “Suguri-san, may I—?”

“Go,” Suguri interrupted. In a softer tone, he repeated, “Go, Taki-sama. You’re young. You should do all the things young people do, yes? Have fun. And don’t accept anything from strangers.” He pulled a wad of fifties out of his pocket and counted out twenty. “Here. If you run out, then it’s time for you to come home.” He eyed Klaus warily and handed Taki another $200. “Call me if you need anything.”

Klaus walked up to Claudia but before he could utter a word she told him, “Get the hell out of here. I’ll text you when I’m done.”

Now the real game began. As soon as the front door closed, it was heads-up with a $6000 pot. She had every intention of winning it and splitting half with Klaus so he could, who knows, buy himself a one-way plane ticket to Japan because she couldn’t see him letting this crazy affair go. She knew Klaus was going to follow Taki wherever he went like a loyal dog, and if that meant back to Japan, then...

“Do you approve?” Suguri’s voice was a low rumble in the quiet room. Neither she nor Suguri had the all-too-common nervous habit of playing with the chips on the table. He glanced at his pocket cards and raised before the flop.

Claudia took a slow sip of bourbon, glanced at her cards and called. “I believe we only go around once in life, Suguri-san. And I believe it’s best to choose happiness rather than reject it. One never knows if it’ll come around again. What good is life without it? Without joy?”

The brief flash of sadness in her eyes made Suguri flinch. “Westerners place so much importance on this concept of personal happiness.” He dealt the flop.

“Well, if you think of it only as a concept, then it’s already pointless, isn’t it? You feel it or you don’t. You don’t think it into existence. It’s not an idea, because if it is then you don’t have it in the first place.”

Suguri shook his head and re-raised. “Duty, honor, obligation to something larger than yourself. All of these things go beyond your idea of…go beyond the value you place on happiness.” 

“I disagree.” Once again, Claudia called. “We’re all born into this world alone and we all die alone. All the duty, honor, and obligation in the world won’t change that fact. All we can have as people we must grasp in this one life. I say: happiness first, then everything else can come after that.” 

The turn card was a queen of hearts. Suguri couldn’t stifle a smile. “You are a romantic. So is your brother, am I right?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest as if he could deflect her arrows. “So it’s 'me first' and to hell with family, with nation, with the gods.”

“I doubt you care much for your gods, Suguri-san. How you feel about your country is your own business. As regards family, who am I to judge?” Claudia focused on the community cards again. She needed another six on the river to hold four of a kind. The odds were slim, but she suspected that Suguri was aiming for a full house based on his re-raise on the turn. Four of a kind would beat his full house. She normally didn’t play pocket sixes when the turn gave her nothing; no one did, but this was heads-up and anything could happen. She felt lucky in more ways than one, but she needed Suguri to be aggressive. If he fell for the trap, she had enough chips to take him. She eyed the wedding band on his ring finger. “Do you love your wife, Suguri-san? And does that stop you from choosing happiness for yourself? Or is duty, honor, and obligation more important to you?” 

What he meant to be a devil-may-care chuckle came out as an annoyed grunt. “Would it stop you, Ms. Claudia? Would _you_ choose happiness over your husband?”

“Absolutely.” She didn’t smile even though she was grinning like a fiend inside. “Like I said: this one life is all I have.” 

With that, Suguri pushed his chips to the center of the table. “All-in.” 

“I call.” Claudia had just $50 in chips over him. It would be enough.

They both showed their hole cards: Claudia with her pocket sixes, Suguri with an ace-queen. She couldn’t believe he had fallen for the ace-queen! The flop had been a six, another ace, and a three; the turn had been another queen. Suguri had re-raised on the turn having already flopped two pairs. He was gunning for a full house but was feeling confident regardless of the river since he already held the high cards on the board.

Suguri dealt the river card. It was a six of hearts. Now Suguri laughed for real, a full laugh with no malice, only admiration. “If only…” He looked across the table at this petite woman smiling back at him, one eyebrow raised, questioning. Suguri gathered his wits. “I was going to say, if only I had met you in another life.”

“Then what?”

He clasped his hands in front of his face and rested his chin on his knuckles. “Then…perhaps I would have chosen happiness first.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for all the poker-speak. Anyone who plays Texas hold 'em will find all sorts of flaws, but I am a total amateur as a poker player, so please forgive me. Plus, I SUCK at anything math-related.
> 
> Next chapter should involve some slapping and smut. Don't hold me to it!


	30. Chapter 30

 

Taki awoke with a start, his throat parched, his head cracking apart and spilling its contents like a split melon. It took some moments for his brain to make sense of the thick, heavy ache in his lower abdomen. He had to pee something awful. He rolled to his right to get off his bed and encountered a large, fleshy obstacle. Very odd indeed. Another moment elapsed. The large, fleshy obstacle on his bed was Klaus and the man was snoring loudly. And this wasn’t his own bed. Sunlight was streaming through the flimsy curtains hung on the one window in the bedroom. Klaus’s bedroom.

“Okay. First things first,” Taki thought, the thought vibrating like a plucked string of pain, the pain stretching into eternity: he had to take a piss or his bladder was going to burst. He turned to his left this time and hoisted his small body off the mattress, swayed, and then forced himself to put one foot in front of the other through sheer will power. Surely he knew how to walk. If worse came to worse, he could crawl, but he wasn’t a child, he was Taki Reizen, twenty years old, from a respectable family with a respectable job as a major league pitcher. Yes, just the facts, ma’am. There was no goddamn way he was going to crawl like some slobbering baby, not while he was still under the delusion that he held a shred of dignity. He stumbled along on autopilot, towards the bathroom, his eyes on the floor. The last time he had been here, the bathroom had been that-a-way, through the living room.

“Good morning, Taki-sama. Or should I say, good afternoon?”

Taki jerked his head towards the gravelly voice and he instantly regretted it, not only because a violent jolt of pain exploded in his skull, but because he now saw who had uttered the words. Suguri was sitting on Klaus’s sofa sipping on a cup of coffee and next to him sat Claudia. What were they doing in Klaus’s apartment? Taki lifted a hand to his forehead in shocked confusion, and then he realized he was naked.

“S-Suguri-san…g-gomen-nasai.” Taki turned and made a wobbly bee-line for the bathroom while the room spun around him, closed the door and positioned himself in front of the toilet. The seat was up already, which saved him one step. He didn’t know what to do: pee first or vomit? Then nature decided for him and he was just grateful that he remained upright enough to urinate into the toilet and puke into the bowl at the same time. Had it taken seconds? Minutes? Hours? Time was like one of those crazy clocks with the hands spinning wildly. He was sweating and shaking and his chest and abdomen were slimy with whatever had exited his stomach just now. Luckily, he was in the bathroom and even though the room was tilting and he thought that he might be crying deliriously, he was able to stagger into the tub and turn on the water. He couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold water hitting his body. What did it matter? He pressed his burning cheek against something hard and metallic and then he passed out.

When he came to again Suguri was propping him in a seated position against the back of the tub with one hand and talking to him evenly as warm water sloshed around him. He couldn’t understand what Suguri was saying, only that he was wiping his face with a washcloth. Taki heard himself whimpering, high-pitched, panted mewls, the sounds echoing against the tiles and ringing too loudly and pathetically in his ears but he couldn’t stop himself, the sounds kept coming out of his mouth unbidden. What had he done? And what was Suguri-san doing here? And with Claudia? Was Klaus still asleep? He had to warn him, warn him that they were both in deep shit and headed for death row.

Suguri held a bottle of water to Taki’s lips and said, “Drink, Taki-sama. Slowly.” Whatever anger Suguri felt was directed at himself. He shouldn’t have let Taki go to that club without his supervision but he had shirked his duties because he was so enamored with Claudia and eager for the hunt. He’d been elated when he was finally alone with her in the apartment, alone so he could do the things he’d been thinking about during the entire evening. She had been willing and, dare he hope, as hungry as he was. The thought had crossed his mind that he was probably old enough to be her father, but she was so lovely and she had tempted him with some of his favorite things: bourbon and Cuban cigars. He could have beaten her at poker, but he was a gentleman that way and she was a lady in every sense. A gentleman’s duty was to please, to satisfy, to indulge a woman’s whims and desires and he was more than ready to fulfill whatever it was that Claudia wanted. Underneath her composure and wit, she was a woman of passion, he was sure of it. Her flashing eyes told the whole story and he would write himself into it, if only for one night.

So they had taken their drinks onto the balcony and continued their flirtation. The summer night air was warm and the city was alive with the sounds of cars and people talking and laughing all around them. It was well past midnight but things were just getting started. Taki-sama is not a child, Suguri told himself, and I am not his father, as if that justified what he was going to do. Then he had stepped close to Claudia, stood behind her with barely an inch of space between them as she gazed out beyond the West Side Highway onto the Hudson River. He bent low and pressed his lips to the nape of her neck—it had been calling to him all night!—and she had froze, then turned slowly in the circle of his arms and drew him in for a kiss. Her mouth was soft and wet and smoky from the bourbon and her small, lithe body felt girlish beneath his fingers. Suguri was well experienced with women of all ages, but he felt startlingly self-conscious. None of them had been the sister of a man he might have to kill for desecrating Taki’s purity. Then again, Taki’s purity was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

He broke their kiss and gazed with all seriousness into her eyes. “Am I too old for you, Ms. Claudia?”

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Too old?” A giggle broke loose and ran riot for a few seconds. She composed herself, just enough to dare, “Well then, show me what you’re made of, daddy.” She wasn’t backing down, not even flinching, and under the light of moon and stars, she traced a fingertip along the lines on his face, this map of his life. She wanted to journey along with him tonight, depart from the narrow, soul-deadening path she had traveled with her husband for the past seven years, remember what it was to shiver and shake and scream for a man. He had led her back inside to his bedroom, undressed her, and then kissed every inch of her naked body—softly, tenderly, with reverence—made her realize for the first time that she had nerve endings there and there and _there_. It wasn’t until she had come down from her third orgasm that he finally stripped naked and took her with his cock, slow and deep for her fourth orgasm, then hard and fast for her fifth.

“Enough,” she whispered into the sheets, her body boneless and sated. “You win this hand.”

***

Matt had awoken Suguri at eight the next morning. Matt was disheveled, his hair a mess and he stank of booze and sweat and other fluids better left unmentioned. Suguri was only slightly less disheveled, which meant that he hadn’t yet showered and combed his hair into place. Matt hadn’t slept at all, having been up for the last thirty-six hours fueled by coke and god knows what else. Suguri offered him coffee and Matt accepted gladly.

“So, uh, I think you should check on your young charge,” Matt spoke into his cup.

“Please be a little more specific,” Suguri said quietly. He cast a quick glance towards his closed bedroom door. Claudia was still asleep and he didn’t want this buffoon to wake her.

“Strawberry Shortcake. You need to…I mean Hello Kitty…fuck! Taki, did he come back?” Matt took a big gulp and clutched his throat, gagging on the hot liquid. He coughed and then mumbled, “I meant to bring him back here but, uh, there were distractions.”

Suguri was worried. He picked his phone off the coffee table and clicked on the app, then he calmed again. Taki’s phone was still at Klaus’s apartment in Queens. He didn’t let his mind wander further forward, other than to affirm, “Taki-sama did not come back last night.” Suguri took a dignified sip of coffee. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Over the next half hour, Matt told Suguri what had happened last night to the best of his recollection. They had gone to a club in Hell’s Kitchen.

“What is this place?” Noah had scowled upon entering. “You took us to a gay bar?”

The place was set up to look like an Old West saloon, the staff outfitted in tight white t-shirts, vests, and cowboy hats and boots, people line dancing all over the fucking place, every guy ripped and handsome.

“If you weren’t such a dumbass,” Matt had told Noah, “you’d know that the hottest women troll all the gay establishments. Straight guys are fucking ugly and hot women are not interested in ugly.”

One look around the place proved Matt correct. The women were hot and there were plenty of them and they were all enjoying the eye candy and looking to get it on with something male and meaty that swung both ways. It didn’t take long for people to recognize them, Noah and Matt at least. The few Mets fans there even knew who Taki and Klaus were. They were asked for autographs, then they posed for selfies, it was all good until…maybe an hour or two later when they had all gone through several rounds of drinks. Matt and Klaus were snorting lines and arm wrestling patrons and staff alike. Everyone was lit and stupid and then Noah, who had slipped some E into everyone’s drinks, had leaned in and kissed Taki, full-mouthed and sloppy, after getting him on the dance floor and Klaus had seen, seen Noah manhandling his boy, seen Taki slapping Noah right across the face, then Noah going in for seconds because the man would not be deterred. 

“You know you want it,” Noah had told him, grabbing Taki around the waist again. “You know you want me.”

After that, well, there was a lot of punching going on, fists impacting on faces, Klaus and Noah rolling on the floor just wailing on each other with every limb available. Matt had pulled Taki out of the fray, backing him into a relatively safe corner because he was the one who had brought them there and he didn’t want Suguri to come after him if Taki…if something happened to Taki. Christ, Matt knew he’d be a dead man if something happened to Taki. So Matt had finally dived in and pulled Noah and Klaus apart, pushed Klaus and Taki into a cab and told them, “Get the hell out of here. I’ll take care of Noah.” Then he had put Noah in another cab and gone home with some woman, a redhead who lived with at least three cats. He had done some more lines of coke with her, had sex, then did some more coke, had sex again, and now here he was, sitting with Suguri in his fancy condo in Chelsea.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Suguri said, exhausted by Matt's mile-a-minute retelling of their foolish antics. “Then we can have some breakfast. Then you should go home and sleep it off. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

***

 _I’ll take care of the rest_. Normally when Suguri set out to do something, he did it with confidence. But there was little certitude in Suguri’s actions as he bathed a very badly hung over Taki. If anything, he was wondering what he should do next for fuck’s sake. He had failed Taki, and yet Claudia was sitting in the living room of Klaus’s ratty apartment and somehow that made everything alright. When Matt had told the story all over again to her at breakfast, she had merely straightened her shoulders and declared, “Boys will be boys. It can be fixed.” She had smiled at Suguri over her cup of coffee and told him, “I have a key to Klaus’s apartment. I’ll handle him.” It had been so reassuring. He didn’t have to kill Klaus; she would likely do it for him. Would she if he asked her to? Would she erase Klaus from Taki’s life? It may even be a moot point once management found out what had transpired. Taki would likely face a suspension if he failed a drug test; his contract wouldn’t be renewed at the end of the season. Ah, yes. They could go back home. A small smile crept across Suguri’s face. There was still the possibility that Taki’s reputation would be damaged permanently, but the Japanese sports media were far more respectful of its athletes. Taki could still escape relatively unscathed if Suguri pulled all the right strings. He didn’t give a shit what happened to Klaus.

The bathroom door crashed open on its hinges and a large nude man barreled in, stood at the toilet and took a very loud and inaccurate piss. Suguri looked up into Klaus’s face and saw that Klaus had two black eyes and a badly bruised and swollen jaw. The absurdity of it all hit Suguri in the chest. He began laughing and couldn’t stop. This was just too fucking ridiculous. The look on Klaus’s face was priceless as he stood with his cock still dribbling in his hand, his hair sticking up wildly, his body tattooed with angry purple and green welts in the shape of knuckles and what looked like teeth marks. 

Klaus choked on his own tongue when he noticed Suguri crouching in front of the tub. “Th’ fuck?”

The roar of Suguri’s laughter drowned out whatever Klaus was going to say. The man had given and received a brutal pummeling, far worse than anything Suguri would have done to him personally, and it was a glorious sight for his tired eyes. He looked back at a pale-faced Taki, who was too miserably sick to cry out in horror.

“No worries, Taki-sama,” chuckled Suguri, “we’ll be going home soon enough.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know: WTF?! This train has officially derailed.


	31. Chapter 31

 

When he thought about everything he assumed he would have in life, all the ordinary, mundane things—a house, a wife, children perhaps—his heart ached in a way he could barely endure, and yet just one look at Taki made all the pain of loss go away. It was a matter of choice, wasn’t it? To go left or to go right, to say yes or to say no, to follow his head or his heart…was there really a right and a wrong answer? Maybe life was all about asking the question, having the courage to ask it in the first place and then take that leap into the unknown. If he were a religious man, he’d probably call it an act of faith. But he wasn’t religious and he had no god to catch him should he fall. He had something better, a distant, dreamlike memory that had solidified into something real and tangible held by a thread of a scent. He would follow that thread back to the source. He would finally reach the Promised Land.

***

_Late January_

The plane landed smoothly at Narita International Airport outside of Tokyo and taxied to the gate, but Klaus didn’t move to unbuckle his seatbelt even as the cabin came alive with passengers anxious to gather their things and disembark. He had a window seat near the tail; no sense in spending the next twenty minutes standing in the aisle crushed front and back when he could remain shoehorned in a seated position like he had been for over fourteen hours. It was around three o’clock in the afternoon Tokyo time and the sky was starting to lower and cloud up. He’d had nearly seven months to stew in regret and loneliness, but those dark months had carried an upside. It had made him _know_ what he had to do with a certainty that was rare in life.

And he’d had a little bit of luck, too. Pedro Lopez, his former manager in Triple A, had moved to Japan to manage the Hanshin Tigers and had been instrumental in bringing Klaus over on a one-year contract. It would be a much-needed new start and one that would mean seeing Taki again, who was back to pitching for the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, the main rivals of the Hanshin Tigers in Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League. What luck indeed. They would be competing _against_ each other now and the idea of stepping into the batter’s box to face Taki on the mound had Klaus grinning like a besotted fool. Most of the Japanese pro baseball teams, and some from South Korea, would begin spring training next month on the island of Okinawa—the Tigers in Ginoza and the Giants in Naha City—and they would play each other at an exhibition game in late February. It had been so long and Klaus couldn’t wait to see him again, didn’t even know how he had stayed alive without him. The last time he had been in the same room as Taki was a day he couldn’t even recall clearly and then everything had gone to hell in the days afterward like an unending nightmare.

***

_The Previous July_

Three bad things happened in quick succession that day, all because he had made the mistake of waking up: 1) he found himself standing in what looked like vomit as he peed somewhere in the vicinity of the toilet, 2) Suguri had materialized in his bathroom like some Satanic apparition and, 3) his sister was waiting in his living room to give him the spanking of a lifetime. Standing in vomit in his bare feet seemed almost quaint compared to Bad Thing 2 and 3. Oh, right, and he was naked while all this transpired, a fact that tasted like some kind of perversely gross icing on a cake from Beelzebub’s Bakery. All Klaus needed now to make the disaster complete was for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to gallop through his apartment and trample him underfoot. That would have been a mercy. 

“Are those teeth marks?”

Claudia’s voice stopped Klaus in his tracks. He whirled around, both hands cupping his groin on reflex. “Claudia? What are you doing here?” Klaus blinked hard, several times, willing himself to wake the fuck up because he _had_ to be dreaming. First Suguri, now his sister, in his apartment. He had snorted his share of coke the other night with Matt, that he could remember, but maybe there had been some LSD laced in with it…how else could he be hallucinating like this? The sticky vomit between his toes felt all too real, though.

“Your ass,” Claudia said flatly. “Your ass has teeth marks.” She did not look amused.

“My ass? Wh-what about it?” Klaus craned his neck for a look and groaned when he felt a painful twinge. “Ah, fuck! Why is this happening?”

Claudia got up from the sofa and walked over to Klaus, who cringed like a man about to be anally probed with a red hot poker. “Let me see,” Claudia ordered. When Klaus just stared back at her unmoving and dumb, she punched him in the chest and barked, “Turn around!”

He turned around and let her examine his buttocks. It was humiliating, more humiliating than any prostate exam at the doctor’s office. Shouldn’t she be more concerned about his battered face?

“Yeah,” she sighed, “those are definitely teeth marks.” She turned him back around but not before landing a firm slap on his maimed ass cheek, then looked him up and down. There was a nasty cut above his right eyebrow that had scabbed over, his arms and chest were covered in bruises, the flesh around his eyes purpled and swollen, his jaw lumpy. “You’re quite a sight, little brother, but I’m sure Suguri-san can fix you up. He’s a doctor, you know.” 

Klaus pulled back with a jerk. “Holy fuck. He’s really here? I…” His mind reeled and ricocheted in his throbbing skull. Think, goddamn it! “I need to…uh…buy a plane ticket…no…I need to pack a bag and _then_ buy a plane ticket…and…”

“Just go put some clothes on. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee.” Claudia brushed her hand lightly against Klaus’s sweaty cheek. “We’ve both had a long night.” Then she sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “My god, Klaus, you smell like…” a bizarre mix of flowers and cum, thought Claudia, “…you really need to take a shower.”

What followed after the shower was something like the Spanish Inquisition, or maybe even worse, who knows, Klaus hadn’t been alive during the 15th through the 19th centuries, but he’d never had to endure questioning by both Suguri and Claudia in one day, an experience not unlike having one’s fingernails pried off. Taki had escaped the grilling because he was too sick. Suguri had gently bathed Taki and then wrapped him in a yukata he had brought along, made him tea from tea leaves he had also brought along, soothed him with kind words and an injection from his kit of goodies. Klaus had _not_ been on the receiving end of that loving treatment, although Suguri did stitch up the cut above his eyebrow that had opened up again in the shower, _sans_ anesthesia of course. He was pretty sure Suguri had neglected to numb the wound on purpose.

“I trusted you.”

“You are a monumental disappointment, just as I knew you would be.”

“Didn’t I tell you: no more drugs!”

“Are you a pervert?”

“Mom is rolling over in her grave.”

“In what other ways did you violate Taki-sama?”

“Just how bombed were you?”

“There was a time when castration would have been just punishment.”

The accusations and declarations came rapid-fire and after a while it all blurred into one messy clusterfuck of nauseating confusion. It was easier to plead “Guilty!” to all of the charges than attempt some lame appeal for leniency. He had been there, after all, and failed to prevent all the ensuing mayhem. The truth was he had been a part and parcel of the mayhem and now both he and Taki were royally screwed. Matt and Noah…he should have known better, known to be more careful, but he had been an idiot and let his demons run wild. 

“I’m so sorry, Taki.” Klaus whispered the words into Taki’s ear before Suguri led him out of his apartment. Taki smiled sadly, not at him, but somewhere over his shoulder; his eyes were so beautiful but they wouldn’t meet his own and it made Klaus want to kill himself on the spot because it was Taki’s way of shutting the door. That night, when he was alone at last, Klaus let himself cry. He wept like a baby. Everything was lost. Taki. His major league career. All of it down the drain because of his own stupidity, his own lack of self-control. Taki. Yes, Taki had bitten him the other night, the memories came clearly now. Matt had put them both in a taxi after Klaus’s altercation with Noah and they had gone back to Klaus’s apartment. Then…they had made love. Sweet, glorious love.

Klaus was firing on all cylinders, adrenalin pumping through his veins from the fist fight, cocaine doing its own high octane dance in his body and brain, alcohol just adding to the euphoria lifting him all the way to heaven. Taki was flying high on E and shots of something. Vodka? Tequila? Klaus wasn’t sure, he hadn’t kept a close eye on him at the club because he was too busy getting trashed himself. If he’d done his job, he might have caught Noah slipping Taki the E and punched Noah’s lights out early on. It wouldn’t have saved his own career, but it might have saved Taki a whole lot of trouble. At the time, though, he wasn’t thinking about the consequences. He wasn’t _thinking_ at all. All he knew was that he had Taki in his arms and was fucking him on every surface available—the sofa, the coffee table, against the wall, on the kitchen counter, on the floor, and finally on the bed—and in every position conceivable as if they were acting out the Kama Sutra. Taki was so light and flexible and insatiable and at some point through the haze of drug-addled sex Klaus had felt it: the sharp nip of teeth clamping down a little too hard on an ass cheek. Klaus touched the tender spot and reveled in the dull ache, hoped that it would never go away.

The next day, he was called into Sandy Alderson’s office after a mandatory drug test. The players were technically on break but it didn’t matter. The Mets’ front office and public relations staff were hard at work putting out the fire that Klaus had been partially guilty of setting. Several people had posted both photos and video taken at the club on various social media sites and it didn’t look good: the drinking, the drugging, the brawling. It was no secret that Matt engaged in such activities on a regular basis, but Matt was already out the door as far as the Mets were concerned. They were going to unload him by the July trade deadline to any team willing to take him. Noah came through unscathed. He was their ace and they would protect him at all costs, and the footage of the fight clearly showed Klaus attacking Noah first and Noah merely defending himself. 

Noah had also passed the drug test with flying colors. The bastard had been dealing all night but was smart enough not to partake of anything besides alcohol, which was not a banned substance. Klaus, though, tested positive for the coke still in his system and, while coke was illicit, it wasn’t considered as bad as anabolic steroids or other PEDs, which would have resulted in a suspension. Klaus was fined heavily and then handed a plastic garbage bag and told to clean out his locker because he was being sent back down to Triple A and he better be damn grateful he wasn’t dropped altogether. A security officer accompanied him downstairs to make sure he didn’t dilly dally. They wanted him out of there and out of there _now_.

Matt was sitting hunched forward on a folding chair in front of his own locker, nursing a cup of coffee, when Klaus wandered into the locker room trailed by security. He wondered if management had already met with Taki. Maybe he was still in the building. Klaus glanced around, hopeful.

“He’s not here,” Matt said. “They left hours ago.” He took a sip of his Starbucks coffee and slumped back against the chair. “Suguri must have finagled some kind of deal for Shortcake ‘cause they’re gonna let him finish off the season. Happy?” Matt looked absolutely haggard but he was in a surprisingly good mood, all things considered. 

“What about you?” asked Klaus, not even bothering to ask Matt how he knew about what had happened with Taki. He figured Matt had his sources. “Did you pass the drug test?”

“Of course not. Did you?”

Klaus shook his head slowly. “Nah. Failed it. Got fined, too.”

“Yeah,” Matt nodded. “Fifth time for me. Looks like I’ll be somewhere else by the end of the month. I’ve heard the Padres are interested in me. Christ.” Matt started laughing hysterically. The Padres were ensconced comfortably in the basement in the National League West. “Another last place team but, hey, at least I’ll get to enjoy the good ole California sunshine. Things could be worse.” He smiled ruefully at Klaus. “You still got a job?”

Klaus held up the black Hefty bag. “What does it look like?” He walked over to his locker and began stuffing his few belongings into the garbage bag. “They’re sending me back to Vegas. They said…I’m lucky to…” The words died in Klaus’s throat. What was the point of talking anyway? Taki would be alright, for now at least, and that was good enough. Whatever Suguri had done, whatever strings he had pulled, Klaus was grateful. But he was heading back to the hell that was the Nevada desert, back to shitty motel rooms, bus rides in the dead of night, hookers and users and desperate, emptied souls everywhere you turned. And he would be one of them, one of the pathetic losers crawling on his belly eating the dust of misery.

“Wanna go to Shake Shack?” Matt was staring at him with interest. “Have you looked in the mirror, Wolfstadt? I mean, your face looks like hamburger meat.” He laughed aloud again. “Thor really went all Viking hammer on you, heh heh. Shit. That motherfucker’s on a plane to DC as we speak…” With an exaggerated huff, Matt stood up and cracked his back loudly. “C’mon, Hot Lips, let’s get all fat and useless and then we can go back to my place and snort a few more lines. I know a place where we can pick up some very fine chicks.”

“This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” The words carried no sting, no malice, just resignation. Wasn’t this what he’d been doing all along, just giving in to his cravings, letting his own mindless desires rule him? And maybe he would have eventually crashed and burned and that would have been okay. But he had met Taki. Met him _again_ , that is, and Klaus knew that it wasn’t just a lucky coincidence. It was his one chance to fill that void inside him, a void too bottomless for drugs or drink to fill but not too bottomless for Taki to satisfy with his very being. Klaus finished cleaning out his locker. “I’ll go to Shake Shack,” he told Matt, “but then I’m going to go pack up my apartment.” He was going back to Vegas, and he’d use that time to find some way to get back to Taki, even if he had to swallow up the whole desert.

***

_Late February_

The month had blown by like a hurricane. Between signing the lease to his tiny apartment in Nishinomiya where the Hanshin Tigers were based, and then flying out with his new teammates to Okinawa for spring training camp, the days were a blur of work outs, practice, exhibition games, language lessons and general upheaval. The one steady beacon on the horizon was the late February game at Cellular Stadium in Naha City against the Giants. He would see Taki at last because Taki was scheduled to pitch that game. They had had no contact at all since that day at Klaus’s apartment, but Klaus had followed Taki’s season in New York from his distant vantage point in Las Vegas. Taki had finished with a decent enough record, going 2-1 with 5 no-decisions after the All-Star break, but his contract was not extended at the end of September when the Mets had already been eliminated from post-season contention. DeGrom would be back in full form in the spring, so Taki was released by the Mets. He returned to Japan and was re-signed by his former team, the Yomiuri Giants.

And now Klaus was lined up along with his teammates for the pre-game ceremony, where each man would greet his opponents before the first pitch. Klaus was giddy and nervous and sweaty. He wiped his hands for the hundredth time on his uniform as the two lines of players bowed and shook hands in coordinated fashion. He wondered what Taki would think. Surely, he had seen his name listed on the roster. Foreign players were limited to four per team and were still considered interesting anomalies in Japanese baseball. They all stood out like sore thumbs.

Klaus tried his darnedest to focus on the man in front of him rather than gaping down the line like a rude American, but he didn’t have to because even before he saw him, he could smell him, that mind-blowing fragrance of flowers that made his head swim. Oh, god. Taki. And then he was standing straight-backed in front of him, still looking like the beautiful raven-haired boy Klaus had seen behind his closed eye lids every night for all these nights of separation.

“Klaus.” Taki’s voice was soft and steady, his blue-black eyes widening just a little, the only indication of what may have been excitement. “I heard you were here. Good luck.” He knew, of course, that Klaus was left handed, so he held out his own left hand.

It took everything Klaus had to refrain from bringing Taki’s hand up to his lips for a reverent kiss. God, he wanted to so badly but that would have been the most terrible thing in the world to do, so he manned up and reached out and shook Taki’s elegant hand firmly in his own.

“Taki, it’s so good—” Klaus swallowed thickly as he felt it, the distinct touch of hard, smooth metal. He released his grip and looked down and there it was, the gold wedding band gracing Taki’s ring finger, as gold as Klaus’s hair and eyes, as gold as the sun shining down on him, burning him to a pile of ashes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like odd numbers and Chapter 31 seems like the right place to conclude this fic.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who came along for the weird ride, put up with all the wildly non-canon stuff, and took the time to leave comments and kudos. You inspired me and kept me going to the end.


End file.
